The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s

by William I. Hitchcock

ON FEBRUARY 26, 1953, ALLEN Dulles took office as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency; he held the job for the duration of the Eisenhower administration, departing under a cloud in 1961 after the failed invasion of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs. Dulles left behind a significant legacy. The CIA was initially designed to analyze intelligence gathered by a variety of government and military entities. With Eisenhower’s active support, Dulles transformed the agency into the operational headquarters of a secret struggle against the Soviet Union and many other nations considered threatening to American interests. Eisenhower’s CIA went way beyond intelligence analysis; it engaged in global propaganda, foreign sabotage, subversion, economic warfare, coups d’état, and political assassination. Not until the mid-1970s, when congressional investigations revealed the scale and scope of these activities, was any real restraint placed upon the agency.