" He asserts that "the context of the sentence as written was the late 1940s, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, not the entire Cold War, as strongly implied in letters and memorandums circulated in the Senate.
According to Brookes, the latter use of literally - which is especially common in an informal context - sometimes does not add anything to the meaning of a sentence.
Think about it in the context of the age-old game of Telephone where you whisper a sentence around the table until it is distorted into something indistinguishable.