JOHN FOSTER DULLES BOOK OF HUMOR

Before getting down to reading some serious cold war books, I read The JOHN FOSTER DULLES BOOK OF HUMOR By Louis Jefferson. Yes, it's a real book. The NY Times published a rather dull review of it by Mark Russell at the time of publication, 1986. Jefferson served as Dulles security officer and all around guy who got things done in the 1950s. He was a probably physically imposing one sometime jazz musician. Some of his writing seems a bit hallucinogenic. He developed a deep affection for Dulles and seems to have pretty much accepted Dulles' cold war thinking. He does make a convincing case that Dulles was trying to save the world according to how he understood things. Unfortunately some of his understanding came from reading Stalin's Questions of Leninism and taking it as a sincere statement of Stalin's beliefs. Also, a career as a high powered lawyer for large international companies may have inculcated some prejudices along the lines of "What's good for General Motors is good for the country".

Jefferson apparently earned some instant fame (among the delegats and their retinues) at a summit with the USSR in Switzerland not long after Stalin's death. Dulles' car had somehow vanished (it later appeared that KGB officers seem to have gotten the driver drunk), and Jefferson commandeered Harold Stassen's car to pick up Dulles (he did offer Stassen a ride). It made quite an impression with the following result which I'll quote from the book.

"When the Soviets arrived ... I was standing with all the other gawkers in a hallway. Les Russes put on quite a show . . as they marched in two by two ... I found them quite entertaining and watched them whenever I could. When they arrived at my vantage point, Khrushchev stopped, and they all followed suit. There was wonder, and fear, on their faces. Something must be wrong. To stop was not in the accepted pattern. They stood like statues, but Khrushchev waddled over to me, laughing (one observer described his laugh as sounding like "a horse having an orgasm") and shouting in Russian. He started to punch me lightly in the stomach. The Punches came in harder. Then, he pinched my cheek. His protruding stomach backed me close into the wall, and the rest of the Russians surrounded me, pointing, clucking, laughing, wagging their heads. Then, very suddenly, Khrushchev turned serious and did an about face, and they all turned serious and did an about face and continued their march down the hall."
...
"When I asked a Russian-speaking Swiss detective what Khrushchev had been shouting at me, he said, "The Party Secretary was telling you that he was happy that the, uh, 'unpredictable' er, uh Mr. Dulles had not shot you for losing his car."

"Shot me, or had me shot?" I asked.

The Swiss detective thought a moment. "He seemed to believe that Mr. Dulles might, shall we say, have personally ... shot you."