In 1969, former President Dwight D. Eisenhower dies of congestive heart failure at Walter Reed Army Hospital. He is 78 years old.

For the past sixteen years, Eisenhower has been the subject of conspiracy theories centering on his refusal to condemn President Harry S Truman's January 19, 1953 pardon of accused Soviet spy and convicted perjurer Alger Hiss.

In 1958, Robert Welch, founder of the far-right John Birch Society, had raised eyebrows and tempers by citing his actions regarding the Hiss pardon as proof that then-President Eisenhower was himself a Soviet agent under the 'control' of his brother Milton Eisenhower, a charge even Wisconsin Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, still riding the wave of power which had enabled him to successfully defy the Army in public hearings in 1953, did not quite dare to endorse.