NARA Collection hh-strau — Collection hh-strau

Inscribed copy of a press release of President Eisenhower's speech before the UN General Assembly on December 8, 1953. In this speech Eisenhower sought to slow the atomic weapons race by focusing attention on the development of peaceful uses for the atom. Inscribed to Lewis L. Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission in Eisenhower's own handwriting, the message across the top of the first page reads: "For Lewis Strauss -- with admiration for his accomplishment in the field with which this talk feebly deals -- all the best from his friend. Dwight D. Eisenhower." Four days earlier Eisenhower had flown to Bermuda to confer with Winston Churchill and his advisers concerning this bold new proposal. The speech was re-written by Eisenhower on the return flight on December 8. Presidential adviser C.D. Jackson, Lewis Strauss and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles collated and stapled copies of the speech as they emerged from the Mimeograph machine.

Handwritten text of eulogy read by Lewis L. Strauss over NBC television following the death of Herbert Hoover, the 31st President of the United States. Strauss' close friendship with the former president began in WWI when he was Hoover's personal assistant during Hoover's food relief activities. A moving and eloquent tribute.

The Oppenheimer affair occupied center stage throughout much of the 1950's, polarizing the atomic research community and much of official Washington. Oppenheimer's security clearance was suspended after hearings conducted by a special board appointed by the Atomic Energy Commission. During the Board's investigation, Lewis L. Strauss, the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission filed a preliminary report in a letter to President Eisenhower (4-16-54) In it, Strauss revealed that Oppenheimer had admitted that he had lied to government investigators and that he had " many and continuing relations with persons known to him to be Communists while he was engaged on the atomic bomb project and subsequently."