Ike was my favorite Republican president. And Clinton was more Republican than Ike was. Clinton ran as a Democrat and governed the economy and military like a Republican. Ike gave us the Internet, or at least got it ramped up with DARPA and George W. Bush is giving us censorship of the net - for those in the military. And we are next.

Ike and the Brown Decision

I was in the White House where I worked as a voice security cryptologist for Dwight D. Eisenhower when he faced the civil rights crises of 1957. Both Eisenhower and Kennedy faced problems in Arkansas. While I was not at the white house during the Kennedy administration I was at that time at the Pentagon and I remember there were some similarities. First let me mention that when I worked for Ike there were no other Jews in the White House Army Communications Agency (WHACA) and no blacks, but there was one Jew that I knew in the Secret Service.

What I knew of Ike was laudatory. He anticipated the corporate military industrial complex before it became the problem it is today and he warned us. He also upheld a very controversial court decision, the Brown versus Board of Education case.

I also admired him, not simply because he was the boss, but because he treated subordinates with respect. Whenever I went into his office to change the cards in the KY1 machine which he used for secure voice communications, he always said hello to me. I never wore a uniform; none of us did, so it didn't feel like I was in the army and he never treated us like soldiers. It was a very relaxed atmosphere in spite of the fact that he was a general before he was the 34th president and I was hand picked at Ft. Monmouth to work for him.

I believe that interpersonal respect he showed others was indicative of the man I worked for and knew. But race was a problem in those days and when we had to travel with the president because there was still national racism so there were no blacks in our agency.

It was of course a different time and cultural norms were very different than they are today - and there was no challenge of existing norms by Eisenhower who was from Texas. Most southerners, even if they supported equal rights, were for "gradualism" in race relations.

Just a year before I was sent to work at the white house I was stationed at Ft. Monmouth when I married my wife who I had only known for 2 weeks before she asked me to marry her and it has lasted 50 years and still we're together. My best man was a fellow soldier who was probably my best friend at Monmouth was a black man. Maybe it was because I was Jewish and had myself experienced antisemitism before military school when we lived in NJ and I was called "dirty Jew" and physically assaulted as a small kid, and when we lived in Florida and were told to leave a `restricted' hotel because we were Jews, during military school in Georgia, and in the army in SC - to fully understand how hurtful and irrational hate could be and I felt a special kinship with blacks. Jane's best friend was a black girl in high school and she would not tolerate antisemitism or racism.

I hated separate water fountains, one for blacks and one for whites and separate seating on buses and restaurants and businesses who regularly refused service to people only because they were black or because they were Jewish. I hated segregation so I welcomed Brown versus Board of Education decision and the implementation ruling that desegregation would proceed with "all deliberate speed." But, my feelings were not shared by most of the people I knew who still used the "N" word and when they didn't know I was Jewish would also denigrate the Jews.

"The Constitution is as the Supreme Court interprets it, and I must conform to that and do my best to see that it is carried out in this country" (Dwight D. Eisenhower, Public papers, 1956a, pp. 735, 737).

The Brown case happened before I was in Washington and Eisenhower, who was also from the south, was personally opposed to the decision to integrate but he the kind of man who would not let personal feelings get in the way of the law and was determined to see the court's decision upheld.

Before I arrived in DC (1956 when I was still a senior in high school), 101 southern members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives issued the "Southern Manifesto," which expressed their collective opposition to any enforcement of the school desegregation order. I remember that Eisenhower opposed the Southern Manifesto's nullification of federal law and he said to the nation that he was sworn to defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States and would not abandon or refuse to carry out his duty to bring about desegregation.

When Governor Faubus of Arkansas defiantly blocked desegregation Eisenhower issued this proclamation: "I will use the full power of the United States including whatever force may be necessary to prevent any obstruction of the law and to carry out the orders of the Federal Court" (Dwight D. Eisenhower, Public papers, 1958, p. 689).

"Under the leadership of demagogic extremists, disorderly mobs have prevented the carrying out of proper orders from a federal court. Local authorities have not eliminated that violent opposition.... Whenever normal agencies prove inadequate to the task and it becomes necessary for the Executive Branch of the Federal Government to use its powers and authority to uphold Federal Courts, the President's responsibility is inescapable." Eisenhower continued, "With that responsibility, I have today issued an Executive Order directing the use of troops under Federal authority to aid in the executive of Federal law at Little Rock, Arkansas" to enforce "the Court's order relating to the admission of Negro children to school" (Public papers, 1958, pp. 689-694).

Much to his credit, after he left the presidency, Eisenhower endorsed the decision (Brown) as morally and legally correct.

I liked Ike.

Ike was also from Texas. Bush says he is from Texas but isn't. He says he was a airman also - and wasn't - not long enough to be called one. I call him a chicken hawk because he loves his wars abut never fought in one himself - nor will he send his children to die for his psychopathic delusions. He likes to send somebody else's children to die for oil.

After he retired from the army in 48 he became president of Columbia University (for two years) and both political parties wanted him for president of the United States. He was middle of the road politically and until that time was neither Republican or Democrat. Even my Democratic mother IKE and when he won the election as a Republican, winning support from "middle of the road" Republicans and Democrats, he also retained (Democratic) Roosevelt "New Deal" programs. George W. Bush would like to get rid of the New Deal beginning with social security.

Eisenhower proposed combining "New Deal" social agencies into the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and it was approved by Congress and he also pushed an increase in Social Security payments and increases in the minimum wage. He was unusal for a Republican. It was also his proposal for the Interstate Highway System. To his credit he tried to make it possible for 18 year olds to vote but Congress did not pass it. He worked closely with the Democrats to get other legislation passed, but he did not stop the greatest witch hunt in my lifetime when Senator Joseph McCarthy was accusing everyone of being a communist, including Eisenhower. McCarthy was a nut - who destroyed a lot of lives with his wacko (unfounded) communist conspiracy accusations. When I was hired at the White House I had to take and sign loyalty oaths and swear that I had never had an association with a long list of organizations, many of which were not communist.

There was some talk of Ike working as a "hidden hand" with his VP, Nixon and the Senate Majority leader, who was Lyndon Johnson, who became president when Kennedy was shot, to weaken and discredit McCarthy. McCarthy's ideas were powerful and widely popular with a lot of people. Eventually McCarthy was censured by the Congress for "unfair tactics of smear and innuendo."

Eisenhower had a heart attack in 1955 but he was easily elected to a second term. It was during the second term when I worked for him. While I was there Ike had a stroke while in office in 1957. I stayed with him through 1959, at which time I was assigned to COMZREAR in Orleans, France and 2 1/2 years later I was back in Washington workin in the War Room in the Pentagon, for the Chiefs of Staff.

It was during my tour at the White House when the Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite into outer space and IKE set up the Pentagon Advanced Research Projects Agency, which became DARPA. It was also in 1958 while I was there at the White House that the National Aeronautics and Space ACT (NASA) was established in 1958.

• (And in 1959 Fidel Castro assumed power in Cuba)

When I was still in France we suffered several set-backs. Besides my personal tragedy when we lost our son in an automobile accident the Soviets shot down an American U-2 recon plane over Russia. Ike denied the plan flew over Soviet land territory, but I knew they did and they the administration had to admit to it too after Gary Francis Powers, the pilot was paraded before the media. That lie cost us. Khrushchev withdrew their invitation for Eisenhower to visit the Soviet Union and later when Eisenhower was touring the Far East he was forced to cancel a visit to Japan because of anti-American sentiment.

Today Bush's lies are costing us dearly also. When they know you are lying it is really dumb to put more lies to the lie.

Hank Roth

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