shroud of official secrecy, aristocratic social demeanor, and whiff of New Deal–style big government, the CIA was an obvious target for McCarthy; the surprise was that the assault was so long in coming. In the event, Allen Dulles (who had succeeded Smith as DCI in February 1953) stood firm, refusing to yield up the senator’s intended victim, Dean Acheson’s Yale-educated son-in-law William Bundy, who had made the mistake of contributing to Alger Hiss’s defense fund.77 When McCarthy then tried going after other CIA officers, he was foiled by an ingenious deception operation devised by counterintelligence specialist James Angleton.78 Tired of chasing false leads, McCarthy transferred his attentions to the U.S.
Army, becoming embroiled in a series of televised hearings that eventually led to his downfall. Dulles’s stance, which compared very well with the more submissive posture of his brother John Foster over at State, helped foster the CIA’s reputation as a safe haven for anticommunist liberals in Red Scare America. However, it did little to alleviate the problems immediately facing Wisner, who was himself the subject of an FBI security investigation focusing on his wartime romance with a celebrated Romanian anti-Nazi, Princess Caradja.79
Wisner liked to boast of his ability to play any tune he wanted on the CIA’s Mighty Wurlitzer of Cold War covert operations. Yet, in truth, the task of trying to manage such a vast array of projects and “assets” had begun to control him. Friends noticed that his usually ornate but measured southern mode of speech was acquiring a prolix, hectic quality. He smoked and drank too much. A habit of flexing the muscles in his forearms during meetings grew into a nervous tic. Part of the problem was his personal relationship with Dulles (whom Wisner had succeeded as Deputy Director/
Plans). True, the new CIA Director did not have the martinet-like qualities of Smith, and he was far more favorably disposed toward covert action than his predecessor, but Dulles undermined his (surprisingly thin-skinned) deputy by reaching down the chain of command and interfering in ongoing operations, as well as displaying an ill-disguised favoritism toward lieutenants who, unlike Wisner, shared his Yankee origins. Physical and mental exhaustion also took their toll: after working for six days a week from eight in the morning to the same hour at night, the DD/P
would often don evening dress and head off to some Georgetown party where, likely as not, Cold War strategy would feature in the dinner conversation. Nor did Sundays provide any relief from this whirl: indeed, the
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Sunday night party, at which guests would dine, drink, and dance until two or three on Monday morning, was a Georgetown institution. Above all, there was the simple fact that Wisner, with his fierce ideological conviction and fragile sense of self, was not well suited to the role of spy. This was a job that demanded the jovial pragmatism and inner coldness of someone like Allen Dulles.80
Meanwhile, even true believers in rollback were starting to lose their faith. In 1952, a “murder board” set up by Frank Lindsay, one of the chief planners of the exile strategy, weeded out about a third of OPC projects.