In 1948, he worked for Republican presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey as a speechwriter specializing in foreign policy issues. Bundy had expected Dewey to win the 1948 election, and to be rewarded with some sort of senior post in a Dewey administration. After Dewey's defeat, Bundy became a political analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, where he studied Marshall Plan aid to Europe. The study group included such luminaries as Dwight D. Eisenhower, then serving as president of Columbia University; future Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles; future CIA official Richard M. Bissell, Jr.; and diplomat George F. Kennan. The group's deliberations were sensitive and secret, dealing as they did with the classified fact that there was a covert side to the Marshall Plan, by which the CIA used certain funds to aid anti-communist groups in France and Italy.