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During those latter Eisenhower-era years, Douglas Dillon laid down U.S. policy for negotiations under the 38-nation General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). He teamed up with the Export-Import Bank and the International Monetary Fund to work out loan deals that eased temporary balance-of-payments problems for Brazil, Colombia, Britain, the Philippines, Chile and India. He took an immense interest in Latin American affairs, represented Ike at last September's Bogota conference, which programed the spending of $500 million in U.S. development grants. Dillon's monument was the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development—a Marshall Plan successor that now molds the foreign aid programs of the free world. Dillon helped draw up plans for the program, and last December, weeks before he moved into Treasury, proudly signed the OECD charter.
Trooper in Skirmishes. Thanks largely to his passion for unadorned fact, to his careful homework (he likes to field questions without having to whisper to aides for an answer), and to his polite and unruffled demeanor, Dillon proved to be one of Ike's most valuable troopers in skirmishes with Capitol Hill. He is not a man to make memorable quotes, but accomplishes more by not drawing attention to himself. One time he did not entirely escape the limelight was during the U-2 spy case last spring. Christian Herter was at a NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Istanbul, and Dillon was Acting Secretary of State when word reached Washington that the Russians had shot down a U2. Dillon, who had been fully briefed on the plane's real reconnaissance mission, nonetheless allowed State Department spokesmen to release a trumped-up cover story that the U-2 was merely on a weather-scouting flight. He did not tell his press officers the real truth until after Nikita Khrushchev announced that Pilot Francis Powers had been taken alive. Caught mouthing a useless lie, State was roundly scored for the gaff.
During last fall's presidential campaign. Republican Dillon loyally contributed $11,000 to G.O.P. campaign funds. Actually, he was a safe bet to stay on in a top Government job no matter which candidate won. Dick Nixon thought of him for a top Cabinet post. So also—after New York Bankers Robert Lovett and John McCloy turned down the job of Treasury Secretary—did John Kennedy, who desperately wanted to forestall criticism of the New Frontier by placing a sound-money man in the sensitive Treasury job.