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

by William I. Hitchcock

Brownell’s accusation that Truman had knowingly advanced the career of a high-ranking Soviet agent triggered what the New York Times called “the most rancorous political brawl of the year.” Of course the charges were deeply embarrassing to Truman. But Brownell’s attack on the former president was depicted in the press as a crude political ploy designed to make the new administration appear zealous in the hunt for communist subversives. Sherman Adams later admitted that the Brownell report was designed precisely to “take away some of the glamour of the McCarthy stage play” and put Ike in the limelight as the leading actor in the anticommunist drama. But the attack on Truman made Brownell look like a political hack who was using privileged access to FBI files to dredge up evidence of Democratic malfeasance.