The Turkish Arms Embargo. James F. Goode
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had feared that a failure to override the veto might cost them the whole battle; he sensed that the House was losing patience and that its members were eager to leave the capital for the fall recess.45
During these tense days, while the measure was making its way slowly through the House, Brademas attended a swearing-in ceremony in the White House Rose Garden, where he engaged in an impromptu conversation with President Ford. The president teased Brademas for giving him a hard time. Brademas responded that he was only trying to help Ford obey the law. The congressman also told the president that, “quite frankly, we simply could not believe much of what Kissinger told us.”46
In the Senate, Thomas Eagleton (D-MO) became the fourth member of the so-called Gang of Four, joining Brademas, Sarbanes, and Rosenthal. Eagleton had gained public attention in 1972 when Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern chose him as his running mate and then quickly dropped him from the ticket when he learned that Eagleton had received psychiatric treatment for depression. Brian Atwood, the senator’s senior adviser on foreign policy and defense issues, believed the incident had only enhanced his influence in Congress, making him a national figure. “He was probably the most sane person in the US Senate,” remarked Atwood. After his rejection by McGovern, Eagleton turned his attention back to Capitol Hill, where he continued to oppose the Vietnam War and the so-called imperial presidency.47
Atwood had recently met with a young State Department lawyer who revealed that he had written a brief for the secretary of state concerning the legality of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The lawyer had concluded that Turkey violated its agreement when it used American weapons offensively. His report had been shelved on the advice of Kissinger’s former personal lawyer and current State Department counselor Carlisle Maw. Troubled by this information, Atwood wrote a speech for Senator Eagleton that took a cautious line, indicating that “unnamed bureaucrats were not informing the president of his legal responsibilities…. That got front-page headlines in the [Washington] Post and the New York Times. It was really big because the press had already been asking about it [the legal question]. Eagleton’s speech gave everybody on that side of the issue a boost.”48
Atwood became worried, however, about the growing tension between Congress and the executive branch. As a former diplomat, he was also concerned about the harmful effect of a cutoff on US-Turkish relations. With Eagleton’s permission, Atwood met with Maw and “suggested to him that if State could indeed get something going on the diplomatic front, perhaps through the UN, perhaps just directly, to get the Turks to agree to come to the table to talk about the issue, then they could legitimately ask the Congress to hold off.” He got nowhere.49
Later, Kissinger called Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT) and asked whether there were going to be any problems with this issue. Surprisingly, Mansfield reportedly said, “I don’t think you’ll have a problem as far as I know but why don’t you come down to the Senate and you can address the Democratic caucus, and we’ll see.” So Kissinger made arrangements to speak to each caucus separately.50
When the secretary of state met with the Senate Democratic caucus on September 19, he faced considerable hostility. Eagleton questioned him about the State Department’s legal memorandum “claiming [that] Turkey’s August actions could not be legally justified.” Kissinger acknowledged that his lawyers agreed with the senator but added that Eagleton did not understand “the foreign policy priorities.” The senator replied, “Mr. Secretary, you do not understand the rule of law.” This confrontation only a month after President Nixon’s resignation “shocked some senators and convinced them that Congress was compelled to take extraordinary measures.”51
Eagleton led the embargo campaign in the upper house during this time, making a number of powerful speeches. He reminded his fellow senators of recent events. “We have just emerged from a trying period of American history,” he remarked, “a period when laws were winked at and rationalized to fit the concepts of policymakers. By and large, we have learned that policies created in ignorance or in spite of the law are doomed to failure.” And in response to the secretary of state’s concerns, he argued, “We are told to ignore the law, we are told that Henry [Kissinger] does not like the law; that Henry will have his hands tied, just as Henry said we would tie his hands if we terminated the Cambodian bombing … our distinguished Secretary of State is famous for his tilts. He tilts toward the junta in Chile. He tilts toward Thieu in Vietnam. His most famous tilt was the pro-Pakistan tilt. His current tilt, his Turkey tilt, is no wiser than the other tilts.”52
At first, Eagleton seemed to be acting on his own, without any input from concerned members in the House of Representatives. On September 9 he sent a letter to his Senate colleagues, asking them to support a sense-of-the-Senate resolution he had introduced three days earlier. He reminded them that in 1964 LBJ had warned Prime Minister Inonu that using American weapons to intervene in Cyprus would violate the bilateral agreement on military assistance and sales to Turkey. Now there could be no doubt that Turkey had crossed that line, and US policy must hold the Turks to account. This resolution passed the Senate with strong bipartisan support (64–27) on the same day that Kissinger met with the Democratic caucus.
Eagleton returned later that month with a much stronger proposition, demanding a cutoff of all military aid to Turkey. By this time, the leading pro-embargo congressmen and the senator and their staffs had met to coordinate strategy. The administration gave insufficient attention to this significant development, as it was rare for members of the two chambers to work together so closely.
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