Scribner served in the Eisenhower administration, rising to the position of under secretary of the United States Treasury.
He also served on the National Security Council from 1959 to 1961 and was later a critic of heightened tensions with the Soviet Union during the president of John F. Kennedy.
An Old Guard Republican, he later served as a chief strategist for Richard Nixon's failed presidential bid in 1960.
After Nixon lost, he left federal politics and returned to his home state of Maine and eventually became a partner in the law firm of Pierce, Atwood, Scribner, Allen, Smith & Lancaster (now known as Pierce Atwood).
[1] The Scribner family papers are held at the Maine Historical Society.