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.
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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--”
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