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

Shinkle, investigative journalist and great-nephew of Bobby Cutler, President Eisenhower’s secretive national security advisor, sheds light on the unusual life of his great-uncle in this informative biography. Cutler was an extremely powerful figure in the White House, considered by Eisenhower to be his “right arm,” and had great influence over American foreign policy during the Cold War. He was also influential in the passage of legislation that restricted the rights of homosexual Americans to hold civil service positions, an act of painful self-repression: Cutler was secretly gay. Using detail from Cutler’s recently recovered secret diaries, Shinkle depicts a man torn between his private life as a gay man and an overwhelming sense of civic duty during the “lavender scare,” an anti-gay offshoot of the Cold War persecution of suspected communists in American government. He also profiles men who played an important role in Cutler’s life, shedding light on forbidden intimate relationships among powerful and privileged men in the mid-20th century. Shinkle’s access to primary source documents and his meticulous research into the life of his great-uncle enable him to produce an extremely intricate portrait of an influential American. This biography is sure to appeal particularly to those interested in the history of the Cold War and the contributions of LGBTQ people in American government. (Dec.)