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Typed letter signed "Foster". Two pages, on two sheets of paper, the first headed "The Secretary of State, Washington."

John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State under Dwight Eisenhower, writes to businessman, and onetime adviser to Franklin Roosevelt, Bernard Baruch, formulator of the "Baruch Plan" to eliminate atomic weapons and other weapons of mass destruction from national armaments (it was not successful). Dulles, advocate of a strongly anti-Soviet posture backed by force, claims to be pursuing such an aim in the long run, though events intervene. In part: "Dear Bernie... We are trying to stick as closely as may be to the principles which underlay the 'Baruch Plan'. But quite a bit has happened since then. Ten years ago the Soviets did not have any atomic or thermonuclear weapons... We intend that for the future... all installations which might make them should be subject to effective control. Thus, there will be no future nuclear bomb making anywhere in the world....  However... It would be a truly frightening responsibility to ask the American people to destroy all of their nuclear weapons when there is good reason to suspect that the Soviet Union will have them hidden away and can produce them at any moment to destroy us..."