246 DASA 2019-2 something, primarily because it seemed that even the Ambassador doesn't dare do anything, even give out a news release, without a check to Washington, I think this thing could be more simply done. I think Angier Biddle Duke could lave been more effective if he had just been able to initiate a bit of action himself. Thie ia the story except for a lot of details and the psychology of the news releases, the many, many things that | would much rather hear discussed here than tu have to continue talking aLout myself. In other words, I think the interesting thing here was sornething that had all of the qualities that were inthe situation Merril was talking about. There was never a panic or anything resembling it. There were little flareups. There was a little demcunstration for an hour or so at the University of Madrid which was nicely timed. They were allowed to demonstrate and then they were told to quit, and when they were told to quit, they did so. There were a few days when fish were not bought. There was a little rough time when any tomatoes from the south of Spain, whether they came from Palomares or not, were not being picked up by the distributor, the middle man. In the high level meeting, in which the Vice- President of Spain participated, it was pointed out that their distributora were not buy- ing the tomatoes from the south. You see, the distributor goes down and buys them and brings them to the city. He was afraid to buy them for fear that when he got to the city he wouldn't be able to sell them. So, they were more or less not buying tomatoes from that whole area, . When the hint was dropped to the Vice- President, and since the gov- ernment licenses these people, the government said, "Those toma- toes are all right, '' and indeed they were. re-establishment of distribution channels, In three days there was The release of this information tells something, too, and that Miss Root is not going to like, I imagine. We had a bilateral piece of paper that we actually handed to Munoz Grandes. This was something that the State Department had agreed upon, and which was going to be bilaterally released, in which the two governments simultaneously adriitted that the accid2nt had involved nuclear weapons, The VicePresident looked at the piece of paper, which was a very benign little thing, and as you might expect, that was the la-t of it. Three days later, unilaterally on the second page of their leading newspaper, a beautiful article came out written to Otera, head of the Spanish AEC, in which he told the details, what the situation was. It wasa moat magnificent bit of factual reporting. When I came into the Embassy the people were running up and downthe halls and one gentleman