Given the violence surrounding Cuba and the unpretty image of the Batista administration, Havana seemed to ward off dignitary candidates that were to succeed Ambassador Gardner. The Eisenhower administration nominated Charles “Chip” Bohlen, a Foreign Service Officer and a former ambassador to the Soviet Union, but he went instead to the Philippines, to handle sticky questions on U.S. bases and insurgency. H. Freeman Matthews, another great diplomat and then ambassador to the Netherlands, seemed a potential recruit, but he rejected the offer. The post was then offered to Thomas A. Pappas, a company executive. President Eisenhower called up his brother Milton, president of John Hopkins University and a specialist in Latin America. Then the president tapped Earl E. T. Smith.