Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment

648 Pages·2012·3.31 MB·English

by  Stephen E. Ambrose

Stephen E. Ambrose
Ike’s Spies
Stephen E. Ambrose wrote twenty books on military a(cid:24)airs and
foreign policy. Early in his career he was an associate editor of The
Eisenhower Papers, and he later went on to publish the de(cid:33)nitive,
three-part biography of Eisenhower, as well as many bestselling
books of military history, including Band of Brothers and Undaunted
Courage. He died in 2002.
Also by Stephen E. Ambrose
Halleck: Lincoln’s Chief of Staff (1962)
Upton and the Army (1964)
Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point (1966)
Eisenhower and Berlin, 1945: The Decision to Halt at the
Elbe (1967)
The Supreme Commander:
The War Years of General Dwight D. Eisenhower (1970)
Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two
American Warriors (1975)
Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944 (1985)
Nixon, Vol. 1: The Education of a Politician, 1913–1962
(1987)
Nixon, Vol. 2: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962–1972
(1989)
Eisenhower: Soldier and President (1990)
Nixon, Vol. 3: Ruin and Recovery, 1973–1990 (1991)
Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st
Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st
Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest (1992)
D-Day: June 6, 1944—The Climactic Battle of World War
II (1994)
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas
Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (1996)
Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy
Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany—June
7, 1944–May 7, 1945 (1997)
Americans at War (1997)
The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys: The Men of
World War II (1998)
Comrades: Brothers, Fathers, Heroes, Sons, Pals (1999)
Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the
Transcontinental
Railroad, 1863–1869 (2000)
The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s
Over Germany (2001)
To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian (2002)
This Vast Land: A Young Man’s Journal of the Lewis and
This Vast Land: A Young Man’s Journal of the Lewis and
Clark Expedition (2003)

FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, JANUARY 2012
Copyright © 1981 by Stephen E. Ambrose
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a
division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random
House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in
the United States by Doubleday Inc., New York, in 1981.
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House,
Inc.
The Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress.
eISBN: 978-0-307-94661-4
www.anchorbooks.com
Cover photo: Geroge Tames/The New York Times/Redux. Cover design by
Base Art Co.
v3.1
For William B. Hesseltine, 1902-1964 and
T. Harry Williams, 1909-1979 great teachers, both
Preface
Preface
Between World War I and World War II, the U.S.
Government did almost no spying on anyone. Spying
was not a gentleman’s profession, it was thought, and
anyway an isolationist America had no need for spies.
Harry Truman reverted to this position immediately after
World War II.
But during the war, the United States was forced to use
spies. The success of the British Secret Service had
impressed Dwight Eisenhower. As Supreme Commander
of the Allied Forces in Europe, Ike was the bene(cid:41)ciary of
information obtained by the cream of British society,
academia, and the arts. He was also at the center of a
successful deception program that fooled the Germans
time after time, while simultaneously he commanded a
series of covert operations that played a crucial role in
the final victory.
So, when Eisenhower became President, he
encouraged the growth of the CIA, which under his
direction and orders grew in size, expanding the scope of
its activities and becoming one of America’s chief
weapons in the Cold War. It helped to overthrow
governments in the Middle East and Latin America, tried
to do so in Central and Eastern Europe, (cid:46)ew spy (cid:46)ights
over the Soviet Union and other countries, and hatched
assassination plots against foreign leaders. To its critics, it