It was April 1953, 65 years ago, that one of our most admired presidents signed one of

the most shocking edicts in modern American history.

It was the height of the Cold War, and Dwight Eisenhower had only recently taken office,

amid fears fueled by Senator Joseph McCarthy, that subversives hiding within the U.S. government

were a danger to the national order.

It was in that context that Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450, declaring that, alongside

communism, sexual perversion, and those were the words that were used, were a threat to

national security.

Ix Executive Order became the trigger for a massive purge of the federal workforce.

In the years that followed, tens of thousands of government employees were investigated and

fired for the crime of being gay.

The full story of Executive Order 10450 and its terrible consequences has only started

to get the attention it deserves in recent years, but now a new book has cast fascinating

new light on the story.

It's a biography of the man behind the Executive Order, Ix First National Security Advisor

Robert Bobby Cutler Jr.

A blue blood progressive Republican from a prominent Boston family, a Harvard graduate, a wealthy

banker in U.S. Army General during World War II, Cutler was one of the most influential

staffers in the Eisenhower White House, and oversaw the drafting of the harsh anti-gay

Executive Order.

What was not publicly known at the time, but which was revealed in the new book, is that

he was also a closeted gay man, tormented by his sexual identity, infatuated with a young

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