A Brief History of Ex-General Edwin Walker: Part One

By Paul Trejo

Part One -- Resignation from the US Army: American History has so far overlooked one of the most intriguing military and civilian figures of the 20th century, the resigned Major General Edwin Anderson Walker, who was the only U.S. General to resign his commission in the 20th century. Few historians recall that Walker was responsible for leading Federal Troops to racially integrate Little Rock High School in Arkansas for President Eisenhower in 1957, and also for leading riots to racially segregate Ole Miss University in Oxford, Mississippi against President Kennedy in 1962. Few historians recall that Edwin Walker first resigned his command under President Eisenhower in 1959, after he was converted to the John Birch Society, or that Eisenhower denied that resignation and gave Major General Edwin Walker his greatest commission -- a command over 10,000 Troops and their dependents in Augsburg, Germany, defending the Berlin Wall. A mythology has arisen that Walker was "fired" from his Germany command by JFK because of his Bircher opinions, when actually Walker was relieved of his command by the Joint Chiefs because of a long history of scandals with the US Army newspapers in Germany, who were more likely spying on Edwin Walker because he had never married and was presumably gay. JFK offered Walker another position in Hawaii, but Walker submitted his resignation to the US Army a second time in November 1961, and this time the US President accepted it. For the first time in his adult life, Edwin Walker was a civilian, and his clash with the political climate of the Civil Rights movement in 1961-1963 presents a surprising slice of American history that has received almost no publicity in the past half-century. This is more surprising because the name of Edwin Walker appears more than 500 times in the Warren Commission volumes investigating the assassination of JFK, since Edwin Walker was briefly a suspect in the JFK assassination. History student Paul Trejo has studied with eminent historian H.W. Brands in his research of the personal papers of Edwin Walker at UT Austin to provide a rare glimpse into the life and times of Ex-General Edwin Walker -- the only US General to resign in the 20th century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Trejo
• Release date: Dec 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311154194

Paul Trejo

BA degree from University of the State of New York (1987).MA degree from California State University at Dominguez Hills (1989)Member of the Hegel Society of America for nearly 20 years.Author: An English Edition of Bruno Bauer's 1843 'Christianity Exposed' (Edwin Mellen Press, 2002).

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A Brief History of Ex-General Edwin Walker (Part One)

Paul E. Trejo, MA

First Edition

Published by Paul Trejo at Smashwords

Copyright © 2012 by Paul E. Trejo

All World Rights Reserved

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

1.0. COLD WAR BACKGROUND

GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR

SENATOR JOSEPH MCCARTHY

THE POPULAR IMITATORS

GENERAL EDWIN WALKER – 1957-1959

2.0. GENERAL WALKER, PRO-BLUE AND THE OVERSEAS WEEKLY

FURY OF THE OVERSEAS WEEKLY – 1961

INVESTIGATION OF GENERAL WALKER – 1961

PUBLIC REACTION TO WALKER’S ADMONISHMENT – 1961

KENT COURTNEY AND THE CONSERVATIVE SOCIETY OF AMERICA

WALKER’S PROMOTION AND RESIGNATION – 1961

3.0. EDWIN WALKER’S COPYRIGHTED SPEECHES

CITIZEN WALKER’S FIRST PUBLIC ADDRESS – 12 DECEMBER 1961

CITIZEN WALKER’S SECOND PUBLIC ADDRESS – 29 DECEMBER 1961

CITIZEN WALKER’S THIRD PUBLIC ADDRESS – 5 JANUARY 1962

CITIZEN WALKER’S FOURTH PUBLIC ADDRESS – 11 JANUARY 1962

CITIZEN WALKER’S FIFTH PUBLIC ADDRESS – 20 JANUARY 1962

WALKER RUNS FOR GOVERNOR OF TEXAS – 2 FEBRUARY 1962

SUMMARY OF THE SIX SPEECHES

LOOKING FORWARD TO THE SUBCOMMITTEE

4.0. RIGHTIST SPEAKER ADDRESSES THE SENATE

Walker’s First Prepared Statement

Walker’s Second Prepared Statement

Walker’s Third Prepared Statement

Attorney Kendall Questions General Walker

Senators Question General Walker

Attorney Kendall Questions General Walker a Second Time

Senators Question General Walker a Second Time

Edwin Walker Clarifies His Taro Leaf and ACA Index Activities

Senators Final Remarks about General Walker

Walker’s Final Prepared Statement

Public Reaction to Walker’s Subcommittee Testimony

Walker Loses His Campaign for Governor

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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PREFACE TO PART ONE

My research into four years of the life of General Edwin A. Walker (1909-1993) expanded before my eyes and frustrated my abilities as the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) rejected all my requests for relevant audio and visual media as well as printed materials related to his life, on the grounds of Freedom of Information Act exceptions.

There is no full-length biography of General Walker, despite his role in several aspects of 20th century American history, including WW2, the Korean War, the Cold War, the Ole Miss riots and John Birch Society excesses. The amplest monograph we possess on Walker is a 1994 dissertation by Chris Cravens (Edwin A. Walker and the Right-wing in Dallas, Texas 1960-1966) which devotes six chapters to Walker in a sort of honorarium that tries to maintain objectivity.

In 1962 Kent Courtney wrote a booklet named, The Case of General Walker, yet this booklet devotes only about half of its few pages to Walker, and is more interested in pushing the John Birch Society and related causes. Even when Courtney claims that Walker would make a fitting U.S. President he scarcely makes a case for the claim. Another Bircher book on Walker is Invasion of Mississippi (1963) by Earl Lively, which is a one-sided attempt to make a martyr of Walker’s role at Ole Miss, losing all sense of objectivity.

Aside from these, there are two books that devote a chapter to Walker, and about a half- dozen books that afford him a full paragraph, and perhaps a couple dozen that will grant him a few sentences. To enrich our literary resources about this colorful, engaged and all-too-human character of the Cold War, we are most fortunate to have the archives of the Dolph Briscoe Center for the Study of American History which now includes an Edwin Walker Collection.

The Walker Collection was donated to the Briscoe Center by Walker’s nephew, George Walker, in the early 21st century in a rather disorganized status. Over the years it was expanded as Walker’s secretary, Julie Knecht, added her archives of Walker’s papers to the Collection. Today there are 80 boxes of papers in the Edwin Walker Collection at the Briscoe Center, still mostly disorganized, yet it was this Collection, far more than the NARA, that supplied the materials for this paper. For example, Grand Jury records, available nowhere else, reside there.

In a nutshell, Edwin Walker was a decorated gunnery officer in World War II, and in Korea his men successfully captured Heartbreak Ridge. When he returned to the USA, however, his own heart broke when he followed Eisenhower’s orders and used State troops to integrate Little Rock high school in 1957. Torn between his loyalties to his uniform and to his Southern customs, Walker reached out ideologically to segregationist preacher Billy James Hargis and to the John Birch Society.

In 1960, as the Commander over the 24th Army Division in Augsburg, Germany, Walker implemented his Pro-Blue program for troop indoctrination which included John Birch Society materials. When complaints about this indoctrination reached JFK, their clash resulted in Walker’s rash resignation from the Army in late 1961. He became an outspoken critic of JFK and took an opposing role to racial integration within the Ole Miss riots of 1962, where two were killed and hundreds were wounded. This crisis occurred at the same time as the Cuban Missile Crisis, and this chaotic period must remind us of the graphic words by H.W. Brands:

As nerve-wracking as the Cuban missile crises proved to be, Kennedy found foreign affairs more congenial than domestic politics.

The profound truth of Brand’s observation may be well-illustrated in the post-military career of Major General Edwin A. Walker during the Kennedy Administration, which is my topic.

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1.0. COLD WAR BACKGROUND

The narrow focus of this topic of history is General Edwin Walker’s interaction with the Kennedy and LBJ Administrations, from 1960-1964. I will introduce my topic with a brief portrait of the background in this case, which I will presume the reader is to some degree already familiar, namely, the Cold War period including the eruption of the John Birch Society within whose ideology Edwin Walker lived and moved and had his being.

GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR

I begin my narrative soon after World War II ended, when the Cold War began as the USA and the USSR competed for allies. The Japanese unconditionally surrendered to the USA on 2 September 1945 and the USA inherited the political alliances of Japan, including South Korea. The USA was rudely awakened to the complexities of the Cold War in 1949 when North Korea pushed into South Korea to challenge that inheritance.

General Douglas MacArthur pushed the North Korean army back with relative ease and contemplated taking all of Korea in 1950 as he pushed the enemy back to the Yalu River (~200 miles north of the 38th parallel). Yet MacArthur was decidedly unprepared when 300,000 Chinese soldiers flooded past the Yalu River to protect their traditional military alliance in North Korea, and forced 30,000 USA troops to retreat.

When these U.S. troops found themselves surrounded by 120,000 Chinese troops near Chosin Reservoir (~120 miles north of the 38th parallel) MacArthur requested permission to use nuclear weapons on China to save his troops. Fearing a collaboration of China and the USSR that could spark World War III, Truman denied MacArthur’s request and chose to salvage South Korea in what would become known as a limited war.

General MacArthur challenged Truman directly: a limited war was an absurdity, he insisted, and any reasonable military strategy must take every necessary measure to attain total victory. This mere civilian who was ignorant of warfare and lacked the will to win was a disgrace to the US Constitutional provision for the subordination of the military to civilian governance. MacArthur was enormously popular and had enjoyed substantial credit for the US victory in World War II, so Truman took a calculated risk when he relieved MacArthur of his command over Korean troops on 11 April 1951.

This decision caused President Truman’s popularity to fall to new lows while MacArthur’s popularity soared. Partisan Senate hearings were quickly arranged to investigate possible defects in Truman’s controversial dismissal of MacArthur. MacArthur enjoyed a hero’s homecoming in San Francisco, an enormous parade in New York and a standing ovation every minute for his thirty-minute speech before Congress.

MacArthur absorbed all this national praise and wrote books extolling his viewpoint. With such high popularity, the Republican Party considered MacArthur to be their natural choice for a Presidential candidate. Perhaps he would return to Korea to complete his unfinished business there, perhaps with an alliance with Chiang Kai-shek of Taiwan.

MacArthur said the following about the new Cold War situation of the West facing the Communists in Russia, China, Korea and elsewhere:

War never before in the history of the world has been applied in a piecemeal way; that you make half-war, and not a whole war…That is a new concept in war. That is not war – that is appeasement… There can be no compromise with atheistic communism – no half-way in the preservation of freedom and religion. It must be all or nothing.

MacArthur’s position was respected by millions or ordinary Americans and venerated by right wing extremists. Unfortunately, MacArthur’s message to the Senate would lose the support of half of Congress and ruin his chances for the Presidency. Despite his eloquent words that won sustained ovation, MacArthur had suggested that any restriction on military alternatives – even nuclear weapons – was tantamount to appeasement of the Communists.

General Bradley, General Marshall and the Democrats in particular were unsympathetic to that argument. MacArthur also suggested that no ground should ever be lost in the Cold War, even if it meant sacrificing the traditional American rule of civilian control over the military. This was not what most of the Senate or the populace wanted to hear.

After his famous speech MacArthur’s popularity fell to new lows among the majority. However, a loyal minority continued to hang their hopes on a MacArthur Presidency; among them, H.L. Hunt of Dallas, Texas, and Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin.

SENATOR JOSEPH MCCARTHY

The extreme right-wing minority, following MacArthur’s lead, accused their political opponents of the appeasement of the Communists. General Charles Willoughby, who had been General MacArthur’s intelligence chief, used his documentary genius to write about a global Communist conspiracy that included spies in Washington. A young Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, drank deeply from this historical situation and perceived an opportunity for advancement.

McCarthy devised a simple, one-sided argument for Anticommunism: anybody who doubts the total evil of Communism is either a Communist or a fellow-traveler. Anybody who appeases Communism has already been infected by Communism and must be counted as one of them. Anybody who cooperates with any Communists at any level must already be regarded as a fully committed Communist.

Based on these premises, Senator Joe McCarthy concluded that our two former Presidents, FDR and Harry Truman, had actually been Communist traitors to the USA. FDR had worked closely with Joseph Stalin during World War II and implemented socialist Social Security measures in the USA. Truman had allowed the Communists to hold and keep North Korea