The air in Washington on Monday morning hung oppressive and muggy. At 8 o'clock the rain began to fall in a dismal drizzle, slicking the streets, washing the stone and concrete faces of the capital. The raindrops beaded the row of semicircular windows off the White House south lawn and snaked down the panes. Behind the windows, seated in his red leather chair, President Eisenhower pored grimly over the news dispatches and diplomatic intelligence that told of Iraq's fall.
The reports told everything the U.S. knew to that moment about the coup, and estimated what its effects might be on such Western allies as Jordan and Lebanon. Since the predawn alarm was sounded by the duty officers at the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon, staffers had been at work getting the material ready for presidential decision. In the silence of his White House office, the President of the U.S. knew in Monday's early hours that he must act in time.
Crisp & Quick. Already programed for that morning was a 9:45 meeting of the National Security Council, which was scheduled to deal with civilian defense problems. Ike decided not to change the agenda but to cut the meeting short. At 10:30, during the meeting in the Cabinet room, an aide handed the President a note saying that Dulles had arrived and was waiting in the President's office. The President adjourned the meeting and walked back to his office with Vice President Richard Nixon, Treasury Secretary Robert Anderson, Central Intelligence Agency Director Allen Dulles, Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald Quarles, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Nathan Twining, and a squad of other experts.
Foster Dulles had in his hand a wire from U.S. Ambassador Robert McClintock in Beirut, advising that Lebanon's President Chamoun was urgently requesting U.S. troops. The Dulles brothers outlined the problem: unless the U.S. acted soon, Lebanon would collapse, and quickly. Jordan would follow soon. The U.S. was morally bound to go to the aid of Lebanon, and there was just the faintest chance that a quick movement of troops to Lebanon might bolster whatever resistance there might still be in Iraq. The President's advisers agreed that U.S. intervention would surely reap hot Russian and Nasserian denunciation, but not, in all probability, armed opposition. Crisply and quickly, General Twining laid out a precise account of how U.S. forces could be deployed to help Lebanon (see box).
Easy in his chair, the President calmly listened, asked questions, grunted approval. Said one member of the meeting: "It was good to see him so relaxed. There was no hurling of thunderbolts, nor was there uncertainty. I realized as never before why a President is so important—to be able to give to others, at such a time, an impression of unruffled assurance and confidence. This was Eisenhower at his best."