The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War—A Tragedy in Three Acts

by Scott Anderson

John Foster Dulles had taken special umbrage at a paragraph calling for “the satellite peoples” to engage in passive resistance, and for the United States to “avoid incitements to violence” that might lead to the kind of brutal Soviet reprisals that had so recently occurred in Poznań, Poland. The secretary of state found this proposal “rather too negative in character” and offered his version of a more positive one, suggesting the administration “not discourage” such violent actions if they increased pressure on Moscow. As recorded in the top secret minutes of the meeting, John Foster further opined that “we shouldn’t necessarily be appalled by the fact that if such uprisings occurred a certain number of people would be killed. After all, one cannot defend or regain liberty without some inevitable loss of life.” Among those attendees in strong agreement with the secretary’s lawyerly construction—the administration wasn’t encouraging mayhem but they weren’t discouraging it either—had been Vice President Nixon, and it was duly inserted into the NSC directive that President Eisenhower signed a week later. As a historian for the Department of Defense, Ronald Landa, pointed out, this rider to NSC 5608/1 underscored “a greater willingness to view bloodshed in the satellites as desirable,” and, in certain circumstances, “to undertake actions that might precipitate violence.” But now, just three months later, the administration had crashed up against the precise situation it had e...