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

by Scott Anderson

As he campaigned for the presidency in the summer of 1952, Eisenhower made no secret of his contempt for McCarthy to his inner circle, especially when the Wisconsin senator began excoriating General George Marshall. Marshall had quite literally made Eisenhower’s military career, plucking him from the oblivion of being a fifty-one-year-old barracks officer when the United States entered World War II, to engineering his appointment as commander of the European theater of operations less than two years later. Yet, Eisenhower did not publicly defend Marshall against McCarthy’s attacks during the 1952 campaign, heeding the advice of Republican Party advisors that to do so might cause a rift within the party. On several later occasions, Eisenhower was to say he deeply regretted his decision, but it isn’t the considered judgments of hindsight, but actions actually taken that show the true character of a person. What Eisenhower’s conduct revealed was that, for all his carefully honed image of humility and integrity, the future president was an intensely ambitious creature, one willing to compromise on the most basic precepts of personal honor if it might play to his political advantage.