Peter Shinkle - Ike’s Mystery Man: The Secret Lives of Robert Cutler

A Republican and a devout Christian, Robert Cutler was a retired army general and bank president who helped Dwight Eisenhower win the presidential election of 1952. A lifelong bachelor, Cutler, whom everyone knew as Bobby, became a close friend of Ikes and someone the president trusted deeply. Shortly after the election, Ike appointed Bobby his top assistant for national security affairs. Two months into the new Eisenhower administration, in March 1953, Bobby proposed a reform of the National Security Council (NSC) that would create the position of special assistant for national security affairs, later referred to simply as national security advisor. Ike swiftly implemented Bobbys reform and named him the first person to hold the position, and Bobby managed the NSC in the following years to help the president make decisions on a broad array of Cold War national security issues, from nuclear weapons strategy to how best to undermine Soviet Communism. Bobby knew many of the nations high-level Cold War secrets, worked long hours, kept a low profile, and refused to speak to the press. He was soon dubbed the Mystery Man of the White House.

Yet something in addition to policy and national security may have heightened Bobbys insistence on secrecy. After taking office in 1953, Bobby hired a Russian-speaking naval intelligence officer, Tilghman B. Skip Koons, to work on the NSC staff. Though he was twice Skips age, Bobby developed passionate feelings for the young NSC staffer, an emotional obsession that lasted for years, as Bobbys private diary reveals.

The fact that Bobby fell in love with a young male employee of the NSC may not be shocking today. What is striking is that Bobbys passion for Skip blossomed in the superheated crucible of the White House national security apparatus amid the Cold War, McCarthyism, and the purge of homosexuals the so-called Lavender Scare that gripped the federal government in the 1950s. Bobby didnt let questions about his sexuality stop him from accompanying Ike on his 1952 campaign train, meeting with Joe McCarthy, and being friendly with Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation J. Edgar Hoover even after Hoover investigated him for homosexuality.

Bobby played the role of the straight bachelor out of necessity, and he played it very well. In early 1953, for instance, he steered the drafting of Ikes notorious Executive Order 10450, which banned gays from employment by the federal government. Yet behind the mask of the highly skilled national security specialist, in a secret life amid all the secrets he kept, Bobby was a man who struggled profoundly to find, recognize, and accept his sexual and romantic orientation.

Bobby was an unusual figure in American political life, a Republican who easily crossed party lines and worked closely with Democrats, almost unthinkable in todays intensely polarized political climate. In 1944, he carried out President Roosevelts policy to enable all soldiers overseas to vote, clashing with segregationists in Congress who saw the move as a bid to gain access to the ballot box for black southerners. In fact, Bobby crossed all sorts of lines. He advocated for J. Robert Oppenheimer after the controversial nuclear physicist raised concerns about the dangers of the nuclear arms race. Yet when Oppenheimer fell under investigation for his Communist ties, Ike asked Bobby to help engineer Oppenheimers ouster. Bobby did so, but still embraced Oppenheimers cause and later advanced a plan to sharply reduce the US nuclear weapons buildup.

The razors edge on which Bobby walked is illustrated by his relationship with Hoover. The FBI director needed Bobbys help because Bobby was his primary conduit to Eisenhower, and Bobby needed Hoovers help with national security matters. Both men, aging bachelors with a fondness for male company, were trailed by suspicions of homosexuality. When Hoover himself investigated Bobbys ties to other White House homosexuals in 1957, Bobby must have felt intense pressure.