I'll be generous and simply say that you must have remembered incorrectly. I just checked the De Cecco citation given by Helleiner, and Helleiner is absolutely correct in citing him as supporting evidence. This for the simple reason that De Cecco says very clearly "US foreign aid was thus, from the very beginning, mainly used to balance European capital exports to the United States." (Marcello De Cecco, "Origins of the Post-War Payments System", *Cambridge Journal of Economics* 1979, 3, p. 59).
I have scanned this article in and am almost through editing it. I'll make it available later either by posting it here or putting it on my web server. I also have the Michael Hoffman NYT piece from 1953, and I'll try to scan that in as well...
One more thing on Kindleberger and Milward. Kindleberger, as I said, was a State Department insider, who's objectivity on the Marshall Plan might be questioned when he says, describing George Marshall, "From my lowly vantage point, I should have said 'Olympian' or 'noble'. I could not and cannot imagine him stooping to deception." (Kindleberger, *Marshall Plan Days*, 1987, p. 93).
This unctuous credulity comes at the tail end of an attack on Milward for daring to question the intentions of Marshall and the State Department in inviting the Soviet Union to participate. Milward believes that the invitation was given because "Marshall and the State Department wished to exclude the Soviet Union rather than merely wishing not to be seen as having excluded it" (Milward, *The Reconstruction of Western Europe 1945-51*, 1984, p. 64, n. 18; citied in Kindleberger, ibid, p. 92).
Kindleberger claims that "evidence that makes [Milward] so sure is not presented" in Milward's book. But this is not exactly the case --- Milward cites G. Lundestad who apparently interviewed several key players in his book *The American Non-Policy Toward Eastern Europe 1943-1947* (Oslo, 1978) (cited in Milward, ibid, p. 64, n. 18). Kindleberger also trips over himself and supports Milward's claim when he quotes a key player, Dean Acheson, as saying that the Soviet walk out of talks was "the desired result". (Acheson, *Present at the Creation*, pp. 234-5; cited in Kindleberger, ibid, p. 92).
Bill