“We were engaged in the defense of a way of life, and the great danger was that in defending this way of life we would find ourselves resorting to methods that endangered this way of life.”
The president noted that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had told him, “we should do what was necessary even if the result was to change the American way of life. We could lick the whole world... if we were willing to adopt the system of Adolph Hitler.”
-- President Dwight D. Eisenhower, as quoted in the National Security Council declassified minutes of a meeting in Fall 1953, and as published in “Legacy of Ashes - The History of the CIA” by Tim Weiner, page 75.
(Photo: Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles, 1956/ Wikipedia)