Draft memoir claims Eisenhower discussed military‑industrial complex with unknown confidant

husband and family, but to Americans everywhere.” Here, then, are several excerpts from this preliminary draft of the memoirs of the only United States president ever to resign trom office. # Although President Dwight David Eisenhower encouraged me to call him Ike during the years | served as Vice President, it was a superficial form of intimacy. | regretted his failure to share decision-making responsibility with me at the White House. That privilege he reserved for his special assistant, Sherman Adams. When media coverage of a minor scandal in 1958 involving a rug and a vicuna coat pressured him into letting Adams go, Ike at last revealed a facet of his humanity to me. “By sheer force of habit,” he remarked, “I was ready to seek out Sherman’ s advice on whether or not | should fire him.” It was not until 1961, after Ike’ s farewell address, that he confided in me again, this time about a more momentous occasion. “I suppose,” he began, “my reference to the dangers of the military-industrial complex in my speech came as something of a surprise to you, eh?” “Well, sir, it did strike me as a rather incongruous position for a renowned Army general to take--” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015090