POLITICAL WAR

...His diary entry of May 30, 1951, for example, reads: "Another Decoration Day finds us still adding to the number of graves" to be adorned...

...Eisenhower's alternatives to war involved a range of political warfare activities that included covert operations and counterinsurgency in Iran, Guatemala, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia that were kept entirely secret, undercover, and classified for decades...

...But Roche's pique clearly reflects his identification with America's role in the Cold War, perhaps his personal involvement with Radio Free Europe...

...In reality, Cook's study is the most illuminating, innovative, and intriguing work we are likely to see for some time on Eisenhower's ambiguous legacy...

...Eisenhower's commitment to peace was real," she writes, "but it was limited to nuclear detente and the prevention of large-scale international warfare...

...Psychological warfare' is the struggle for the minds and wills of men...

...Cook devotes considerable attention to the U.S.-directed overthrow of the Guatemalan government...

...Many voters in 1952 and 1956 certainly thought so...

...Although the Guatemalan ambassador argued plaintively that the "United States could help opponents of communism by granting normal cooperation and aid"," the Eisenhower Administration instead embarked upon a broad-gauged campaign to topple the Arbenz government by disrupting the economy, inciting terrorism, disaf-fecting the armed forces, and training mercenary troops for an invasion...

...They became his golf and bridge partners...

...One of the great virtues of Cook's work is its exposure of these operations and other obscure aspects of Eisenhower's career...

...Yet, as Cook reminds us, the picture is complex...

...officers) which carried out a sustained aerial bombardment of the country...

...Lawrence S. Wittner (Lawrence S. Wittner teaches American history at the State University of New York, Albany...

...secured his participation in the Council on Foreign Relations, and sent him "encouraging" news stories ("Capitalist Comeback/ France to Fight Nationalization Trend") or copies of addresses they had given ("Capitalism's Worst Foes Aren't Reds at All...

...The means we shall employ . . . are often called 'psychological,'" Eisenhower was soon saying...

...Both struggles, they believed, necessitated a subtler strategy than the GOP Neanderthals were capable of pursuing...

...American interests," contended the State Department, were "under attack...

...But his vast popularity provided him with a potential influence that attracted a circle of wealthy and powerful friends...

...In volatile Italy, secret U.S...

...Only Eisenhower, Cook observes, could "reforge a bipartisan united front against communism" abroad and curb the influence of New Dealers at home...

...The expropriation of unused land owned by the United Fruit Company proved particularly alarming...

...Blanche Wiesen Cook, in her new book, The Declassified Eisenhower, shows us that they had some basis for their faith...

...The invasion began in June 1954, accompanied by U.S...

...Although hampered at points by the continued secrecy of many government materials, she has made good use of recently opened papers at the Eisenhower Library, newly available CIA documents, State Department files released under the Freedom of Information Act, and the Library of Congress Guatemala collection—the latter a rich resource that includes records of the Arbenz government and of Guatemalan labor and peasant organizations appropriated by U.S...

...war planes (piloted by U.S...

...Don't be afraid of that term...

...Cook's depiction of these events is enhanced by fine scholarly research, analysis, and exposition...

...When Eisenhower used the term "capitalism," they instructed him to "find a synonym," for it could be "handily used by the communists to damn us and all our works...

...introduced him to influential people at posh clubs and "stag" dinners...

...Beneath the sphynxlike exterior of Dwight D. Eisenhower, that bemed-aled military officer and Cold War politician, did there reside an opponent of war...

...Through the efforts of Jackson, the CIA, and the State Department, the Eisenhower Administration brought new vigor and effectiveness to what it called "political warfare...

...Meanwhile, CD...

...officials...

...Eisenhower, she reveals, emerged from World War II genuinely committed to the preservation of the Grand Alliance and to a modicum of liberal principles...

...Radio Free Europe worked to incite opposition movements, although, to Jackson's chagrin, the political warriors found themselves unable to follow through when Hungary burst into revolt...

...In a splenetic attack upon Cook in The New York Times Book Review, John Roche proclaimed that "only a numbskull would trust her" as a guide to administration policy...

...covert operations began in the Philippines, the Congo, Tibet, Indonesia, and Indochina...

...Eisenhower's private observations were remarkably similar to the startling antiwar statements of his public life...

...By 1950, Cook notes, Eisenhower had "joined the proper line of march: The Russians were transformed into the Reds, and he adopted the habit of calling New Dealers 'socialists.' " For stalwarts of the Eastern, corporate wing of the Republican Party, Eisenhower was the ideal figure to head off the Taft fundamentalists, with their disconcerting isolaT tionism...

...Jackson, the publisher of Fortune who had founded the National Committee for a Free Europe and the Crusade for Freedom, two CIA-bankrolled ventures, convinced Eisenhower of the need to take the ideological offensive...

...Indeed, there is a brooding quality to some of his thoughts...

...On another occasion, he wrote to a friend that humanity "ought to be intelligent enough to devise ways and means of avoiding suicide...

...Other U.S...

...Under the leadership of Jacobo Arbenz, the democratically elected president, a surge of reform activity had swept through Guatemala, profoundly disturbing U.S...

...With the success of the U.S.-sponsored invasion, Guatemala began its descent into the long night of bloody rightist dictatorship that continues to the present day...

...funding helped to undermine the Left and maintain the conservative Christian Democrats in power...

...officials...

...helped him to select his clothes...

...In oil-rich Iran, the CIA ousted the nationalist government of Mohammed Mossadegh and installed the Shah—a potentate who, Eisenhower claimed, possessed "a profound respect for constitutional processes...

...Within the Soviet Union's East European bailiwick...

...Talking to Senator Styles Bridges of official studies which predicted tens of millions dead in a nuclear conflict, Eisenhower declared: "When you begin to think of things like that, you know there must not be war...