Ike’s Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment (Paperback)

by Stephen E. Ambrose (Author), Douglas Brinkley (Introduction) "LATE JUNE, 1942. One of those beginning-of-summer days in Britain when it seems that twilight will last forever..." (more)
Key Phrases: oss agents, United States, Allen Dulles, North Africa (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Dwight D. Eisenhower's public image was that of a wide-grinning Daddy Warbucks who preferred the golf course over the cabinet room. He was perceived as a military bureaucrat who never held a combat command. A Republican sandwiched between two Democratic administrations, he lacked the political vigor of his predecessor Harry S. Truman and the star quality of his successor JFK.

Yet behind the placid image he was a sly fox who ran the most efficient espionage establishment in the world. His goal was to keep the Free World free. To do so, he fostered the growth of the CIA, overthrew governments, flew spy flights, and hatched assassination plots. At the top of the intelligence pyramid, Ike shouldered some of the greatest coups in espionage history, as well as some of its most ignominious failures.

Among Ike's successes: The "Man Who Never Was" strategem, the ULTRA-guided ambush of the German counterattack at Mortain, which opened the Allies' way to the Rhine, the 1954 overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman's government of Guatemala, Operation AJAX, which toppled Iran's Mossadegh, and the U-2 flights over Russia. But Ike can be credited likewise for miscalculations: the failure to predict the German attack during the Battle of the Bulge, the Francis Gary Powers fiasco, and the tragic and irresponsible encouragement of freedom fighters in Hungary, Indonesia, and Cuba.

In writing this revealing probe into the 1950s spy world, Stephen E. Ambrose, the author of the most acclaimed full-scale biography of Eisenhower, interviewed the president and many of his agents and had access to much previously unpublished archival material. "The story he tells," said the New York Review of Books in 1981 when the book was first published, "is one of some very low deeds done in the name of high moral principles."

Stephen E. Ambrose was Director Emeritus of the Eisenhower Center, Boyd Professor of History at the University of New Orleans, and president of the National D- Day Museum. He was the author of many books, most recently The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisana Purchase to Today. His compilation of 1,400 oral histories from American veterans and authorship of over 20 books established him as one of the foremost historians of the Second World War in Europe. He died October 13, 2002, in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

From the Inside Flap
Behind Ike’s grandfatherly mask, the free world’s foremost spymaster

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi (November 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1578062071
• ISBN-13: 978-1578062072
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #388,834 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #32 in	Books > History > Military > World War II > Intelligence Operations
  #54 in	Books > History > United States > 20th Century > 1950s

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Useful Account for Today's World, July 18, 2002

By	Newt Gingrich (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews ("THE")

This review is from: Ike's Spies : Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment (Hardcover)

This book is very helpful in understanding the challenges of today's world. Intelligence is a vital requirement for three objectives: Knowing what your opponents are doing; deceiving your opponents about what you are doing; and using covert means to change or replace your opponents.

As Ambrose makes clear, Eisenhower was introduced to the world of intelligence by Winston Churchill and rapidly became fascinated with it. His chief intelligence officer Kenneth Strong, a British General, kept him remarkably informed throughout the Second World War. Ambrose argues, and he is almost certainly right, that only the combination of great intelligence about the Germans and the most successful deception plan in history made the invasion of France possible in 1944. He also notes that deception had also been brilliantly used in 1943 to convince the Germans that the allies were going to invade Sardinia or Greece rather than Sicily. The result was a reallocation of German forces to the wrong places, which weakened their forces in Sicily.

There are a lot of lessons in this book for our generation. Eisenhower valued technology and took risks to develop it. He knew how to undertake successful covert operations. For anyone who would understand the uses of intelligence in the modern world, this is a useful book.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The essential read on the Subject, January 8, 2004

By	Seth J. Frantzman (Jerusalem, Israel) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Ike has always been underestimated as an American President. Occurring as he did, during an era that to history has been seen as boring, and between essential administrations like Truman and JFK, Eisenhower has seemed to disappear to America. Here is a book that finally tells the whole story about Eisenhowers defense team and its use of espionage and covert ops to stop and roll back communism the world over. Ike was a confrontationalist, not a détente' man. This book, by the very esteemed popular Historian Mr. Ambrose, helps to convey the wide range of activities. From the planning of the Bay of Pigs to the overthrow of the Iranian and Guatemala governments Ike brought America to pinnacle of Cold War politics, daring to confront the communists in the same manner they confronted the third world, namely armed intervention. This is a wonderful account and the only one that can be found detailing Ike's covert career from WWII to 1960.
Seth J. Frantzman

3.0 out of 5 stars Good Companion volume to Eisenhower: The President, April 21, 2009

By	Andynator (Logan County, OH USA) - See all my reviews

I enjoyed this book but it is not as well-referenced as Ambrose's Eisenhower: The President, volumes I and II. I feel it is better as a companion book to those titles.

Ambrose has done well to call out specific events during Eisenhower's military service and throughout his presidency; but without understanding a wider view of national and worldwide events, and where these events "fill the gaps" within Eisenhower's military and political timelines, it is difficult to put these events, and Ike's decision-making and influence into the correct and meaningful context.

I recommend this book for the interested reader/historian, but those looking for casual "spy stories" will not be satisfied.