December 24, 1952
S/S
Mr. Tannenwald telephoned the Secretary this morning about the budget for foreign aid. He said that Mr. Harriman had called the Director of the Budget yesterday afternoon and had obtained an extra $300,000,000 in expenditure estimates. He added that this was still very low. The Secretary said that he understood Lawton proposed to break the amount into three parts, lumping the military and economic together. He now proposes to show five and a half billion for 1953 and 7.4 billion for the fiscal year 1954. Broken down internally, this makes 5.5 for 1953 and 5.6 and 1.8 which makes 7.4. The Pentagon, even on the most conservative estimates, would show 4.2 instead of 3.6 and six billion instead of 5.6.
Mr. Tannenwald said that he had the Pentagon working on the matter, that he had spoken with Mr. Lovett, who promised he would talk to Mr. Lawton and see what he could do. The Secretary said that Mr. Lawton seemed pretty adamant and he doubted we could do much with him. He said he couldn't give any testimony about the facts, that all he could say was that if there was a dispute, he didn't see why we had to go out of our way to cause trouble. Mr. Tannenwald said that was all Mr. Acheson could say, and he thought it would be very helpful if the Secretary spoke to Lawton.
The Secretary said he would telephone Bill Foster to see if Defense had done anything or planned to do something.
JCK
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