From Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War by Robert L. Beisner:

In a 1944 controversy… he defended a young assistant, Eugene V. Rostow, against a rampaging Patrick J. Hurley. A onetime general and secretary of war periodically used by FDR and a man Acheson said attracted trouble “like a cloud of flies around a steer,” Hurley went on the warpath when Rostow called his plans to remake Iran in the American image so much “messianic globaloney.”

For personal reasons I’ve studied Hurley’s career for a long time. Hoover’s Secretary of War, he was, as another source puts it, a buffoon. And yet, he got the “messianic” stuff right–66 years ago. And he was a lifelong Republican… He claimed to have taught Stalin to say “What the Hell is going on here?” in English at the Tehran Conference to FDR. That must have led to some high camp hilarity during talks to, y’know, win World War II.

Edit: You know, I misread the Hurley passage. It was his plan that was being called “messianic globaloney” by Rostow, not the other way around. On the other hand, Rostow and his brother Walt were among the architects of Lyndon Johnson’s plan to win friends and influence people in Vietnam, so there’s really no one to cheer for here.

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