While Eisenhower set the general direction of foreign policy, a field in which he was far better schooled than most of his predecessors and successors, he delegated much of its implementation to the brothers Dulles. They spoke on the telephone daily and gathered every Sunday at their sister Eleanor’s place in northern Virginia to plot by her pool. Foster distrusted the Foreign Service and preferred to implement sensitive operations or handle important relationships through Allen’s CIA people because they labored under less oversight.
