Dwight Eisenhower: The Secret Coup Machine

Dwight Eisenhower: The Secret Coup Machine

From Disturbing History by Disturbing History-True Stories

May 27, 2026 · 1h 7m

About this episode

This episode explores the covert operations led by Dwight Eisenhower's administration to overthrow foreign governments in Iran and Guatemala.

Dwight Eisenhower is the president most Americans remember as the calm grandfather of the nineteen fifties. The general who beat Hitler. The man who built the interstate highways. The smile under the bald head. But underneath that famous reassurance, his administration ran something most Americans were never told about. A young intelligence agency, a brand-new doctrine called plausible deniability, and a willingness to overthrow elected governments halfway around the world if Washington decided they were a problem. This episode takes you inside two of the operations that built the template. Iran in nineteen fifty-three, where a CIA officer named Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of a president, ran an unauthorized coup with a million dollars in cash and a network of paid mobs in the streets of Tehran. And Guatemala in nineteen fifty-four, where a fake army, a fake radio station, and a real corporate giant called the United Fruit Company combined to take down a reform-minded president named Jacobo Árbenz. Both operations succeeded. Both were sold to the public as spontaneous popular uprisings. Neither was anything of the kind.You'll meet Mohammad Mosaddegh, the Iranian prime minister…

Topics covered

  • U.S. history
  • CIA operations
  • political coups
  • Cold War
  • Eisenhower administration

Keywords

  • Eisenhower
  • CIA
  • Iran coup
  • Guatemala coup
  • Kermit Roosevelt
  • Mohammad Mosaddegh
  • Jacobo Árbenz
  • United Fruit Company

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: United Fruit Company

Places: Iran, Guatemala, Tehran, Mexico City

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