36 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2025 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL 1961 From Eisenhower to Kennedy: Ambassador Nicholas Veliotes “Don’t Take Anything for Granted” about them. Whereas the previous executive secretaries had been [mid-level FSOs, Secretary of State Dean] Rusk’s executive secretary was [Ambassador] Luke Battle. And clearly the signal was that he, Dean Rusk, was going to put his stamp on the place, and he was going to use the Secretariat as his mechanism. That changed the nature of the job, and you had a much more activist Seventh Floor. … There was no hostility involved. … Certainly the career officers were not hurt. There even was a major effort made to demonstrate nonpartisanship. Bill Macomber, whom everyone confuses with a career officer, was a political appointee of John Foster Dulles, and when the administration ended, Macomber, I believe, was assistant secretary for congressional affairs. The decision was made, deliberately, to offer Macomber (a clearly identified Republican appointee who had worked very closely with the Eisenhower administration and the previous Secretaries of State) an embassy. That carried a message that was very positive. Totally different from what [had] happened to [Special Assistant to the Secretary] Luke Battle when the Republicans came in in 1952. He was literally hounded out of the Foreign Service because of his close relationship with Dean Acheson and others. So [in 1961] you had just the opposite of hostility, you had a feeling that these people appreciated us and that they were not going to play a game of witch-hunting against the career officers. Ambassador Nicholas Veliotes joined the Foreign Service in 1955 and served in the Executive Secretariat during the transition from President Dwight D. Eisenhower to President John F. Kennedy. This oral history interview was conducted by Charles Stuart Kennedy in 1990. There were two things about the transition that struck me very much. Kennedy’s personal curiosity and his desire to know became clear very early. I remember … Kennedy sent a query back on why we had recommended he not respond to the congratula- tory letter of the East German president. And we were shocked. I was handling Europe at the time in the Secretariat. I mean, how could this guy not know that we don’t recognize them, and the consequence of recognizing them, our relationship with West Germany and all of this? We had a brilliant director of German affairs at the time, Martin Hillenbrand. … We decided, maybe what the president really needs is just a two-page background on why. … Kennedy read it and said fine, I understand that. That got everyone knowing that you don’t take anything for granted. The other thing was the nature of the changes that Kennedy brought into the State Department. There was nothing hostile ABBIE ROWE/WHITE HOUSE President Dwight D. Eisenhower meets with President-elect John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office, Dec. 6, 1960.
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