Dulles was a member of the Warren Commission that investigated Kennedy's assassination. A conspiracy theory suggesting that Dulles and the CIA were somehow involved in Kennedy's assassination and its potential cover up in the Warren Commission have been subject to popular debate among historians, political commentators and conspiracy theorists. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that the CIA was not involved in the assassination of Kennedy.[1]
Dulles graduated from Princeton University, where he participated in the American Whig–Cliosophic Society.[7] He taught school in India before entering the diplomatic service in 1916.[8] In 1920, he married Martha "Clover" Todd (March 5, 1894 – April 15, 1974). They had three children: daughters Clover and Joan,[9] and son Allen Macy Dulles II (1930–2020), who was wounded and permanently disabled in the Korean War and spent the rest of his life in and out of medical care.[10]
According to his sister, Eleanor, Dulles had "at least a hundred" extramarital affairs, including some during his tenure with the CIA.[11]
Initially assigned to Vienna, he was transferred to Bern, Switzerland, along with the rest of the embassy personnel shortly before the U.S. entered the First World War.[12] Later in life Dulles said he had been telephoned by Vladimir Lenin, seeking a meeting with the American embassy on April 8, 1917,[12] the day before Lenin left Switzerland to travel to Saint Petersburg aboard a German train. After recovering from the Spanish flu he was assigned to the American delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, along with his elder brother Foster.[13]
From 1922 to 1926, Dulles served as chief of the Near East division of the Department of State. He then earned a law degree from George Washington University Law School and took a job at Sullivan & Cromwell, the New York firm where his brother, John Foster Dulles, was a partner. He became a director of the Council on Foreign Relations in 1927, the first new director since the Council's founding in 1921. He was the Council's secretary from 1933 to 1944 and its president from 1946 to 1950.[16]
During the late 1920s and the early 1930s, he served as legal adviser to the delegations on arms limitation at the League of Nations. He met with Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov, and the prime ministers of Britain and France.[17] In April 1933, Dulles and Norman Davis met with Hitler in Berlin on State Department duty. After the meeting, Dulles wrote to his brother Foster and reassured him that conditions under Hitler's regime "are not quite as bad" as an alarmist friend had indicated. Dulles rarely spoke about his meeting with Hitler, and future CIA director Richard Helms had not even heard of their encounter until decades after the death of Dulles and expressed shock that his former boss had never told him about it. After meeting with German Information Minister Joseph Goebbels, Dulles stated he was impressed with him and cited his "sincerity and frankness" during their interaction.[18]
In 1935, Dulles returned from a business trip to Germany concerned by the Nazi treatment of German Jews and, despite his brother's objections, led a movement within the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell to close their Berlin office.[19][20] The effort was successful, and the firm ceased to conduct business in Nazi Germany.[21]
As the Republican Party began to divide into isolationist and interventionist factions, Dulles became an outspoken interventionist, running unsuccessfully in 1938 for the Republican nomination in New York's Sixteenth Congressional District on a platform calling for the strengthening of U.S. defenses.[21] Dulles collaborated with Hamilton Fish Armstrong, the editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, on two books, Can We Be Neutral? (1936), and Can America Stay Neutral? (1939). They concluded that diplomatic, military, and economic isolation, in a traditional sense, were no longer possible in an increasingly interdependent international system.[22][page needed] Dulles helped some German Jews, such as the banker Paul Kemper, escape to the United States from Nazi Germany.[23]
Dulles was recruited into the Office of Strategic ServicesbyWilliam J. Donovan in October 1941, after the outbreak of the World War II in Europe, and on November 12, 1942, he moved to Bern, Switzerland, where he lived at Herrengasse 23 for the duration of World War II.[24] As Swiss Director of the OSS,[3] Dulles worked on intelligence about German plans and activities, and established wide contacts with German émigrés, resistance figures, and anti-Nazi intelligence officers. He was assisted in intelligence-gathering activities by Gero von Schulze-Gaevernitz, a German emigrant. Dulles also received valuable information from Fritz Kolbe, a German diplomat, one whom he described as the best spy of the war. Kolbe supplied secret documents about active German spies and plans for the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter.
Dulles was in contact with the Austrian resistance group around the priest Heinrich Maier, who collected information through many different contacts with scientists and the military. From 1943 onward, he received very important information from this resistance group about V-1, V-2 rockets, Tiger tanks, Messerschmitt Bf 109, Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet, and other aircraft and the related factories. This helped Allied bombers to target war-decisive armaments factories. In particular, Dulles then had crucial information for Operation Crossbow and Operation Hydra. The group reported to him about the mass murder in Auschwitz. Through the Maier Group and Kurt Grimm, Dulles also received information about the economic situation in the Nazi sphere of influence. After the resistance group was uncovered by the Gestapo, Dulles sent American agents to Austria to contact any surviving members.[25][26][27][28][29]
Although Washington barred Dulles from making firm commitments to the plotters of the July 20, 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler, the conspirators nonetheless gave him reports on developments in Germany, including sketchy but accurate warnings of plans for Hitler's V-1 and V-2 missiles.[30]
Dulles was involved in Operation Sunrise, secret negotiations in March 1945 to arrange a local surrender of German forces in northern Italy. His actions in Operation Sunrise have been criticized by historians for offering German SS General Karl Wolff protection from prosecution at the Nuremberg trial, and creating a diplomatic rift between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. After the war in Europe, Dulles served for six months as the OSS Berlin station chief and later as station chief in Bern.[31] The Office of Strategic Services was dissolved in October 1945 and its functions transferred to the State and War Departments.
Smith recruited Dulles into the CIA to oversee the agency's covert operations as Deputy Director for Plans, a position he held from January 4, 1951. On August 23, 1951, Dulles was promoted to deputy director of Central Intelligence, second in the intelligence hierarchy. In this capacity, in 1952–53 he was one of five members of the State Department Panel of Consultants on Disarmament during the last year of the Truman administration.[33]
After the election of Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, Bedell Smith shifted to the Department of State and Dulles became the first civilian Director of Central Intelligence. Dulles played a role in convincing Eisenhower to follow one of the conclusions of the State Department Panel report, that the American public deserved to be informed of the perils of possible nuclear war with the Soviet Union, because even though America held numerical nuclear superiority, the Soviets would still have enough nuclear weapons to severely damage American society regardless of how many more such bombs the United States might possess or how badly those U.S. weapons could destroy the Soviets.[33]
At Dulles's request, President Eisenhower demanded that SenatorJoseph McCarthy discontinue issuing subpoenas against the CIA. In March 1950, McCarthy had initiated a series of investigations into potential communist subversion of the Agency. Although none of the investigations revealed any wrongdoing, the hearings were potentially damaging, not only to the CIA's reputation but also to the security of sensitive information. Documents made public in 2004 revealed that the CIA, under Dulles's orders, had broken into McCarthy's Senate office and fed disinformation to him in order to discredit him, in order to stop his investigation of alleged communist infiltration of the CIA.[34]
CIA ID card of Allen Dulles
In the early 1950s, the United States Air Force conducted a competition for a new photo reconnaissance aircraft. Lockheed Aircraft Corporation's Skunk Works submitted a design number called the CL-282, which married sailplane-like wings to the body of a supersonic interceptor. This aircraft was rejected by the Air Force, but several of the civilians on the review board took notice, and Edwin Land presented a proposal for the aircraft to Dulles. The aircraft became what is known as the U-2 'spy plane', and it was initially operated by CIA pilots. Its introduction into operational service in 1957 greatly enhanced the CIA's ability to monitor Soviet activity through overhead photo surveillance. The aircraft eventually entered service with the Air Force.[35] The Soviet Union shot down and captured a U-2 in 1960 during Dulles's term as CIA chief.[3]
Dulles is considered one of the essential creators of the modern United States intelligence system and was an indispensable guide to clandestine operations during the Cold War. He established intelligence networks worldwide to check and counter Soviet and eastern European communist advances as well as international communist movements.[36][23][37][page needed]
In 1953, Dulles was involved, along with Frank Wisner,[38][page needed]inOperation Ajax, the covert operation that led to the removal of democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh,[39] and his replacement with Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran. Rumors of a Soviet takeover of the country had surfaced due to the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.[40] By coincidence, on August 18, 1953, Dulles was taking a vacation in Rome while the Shah fled there after a setback in the coup, and the two met while checking in to the Hotel Excelsior. The meeting turned out to be fortuitous for the United States and the coup. CIA and independent historians say that the meeting was happenstance, but conspiracy theories abound.[41]
Eduardo Galeano described Dulles as a former member of the United Fruit Company's Board of Directors.[43] However, in a detailed examination of the connections between the United Fruit Company and the Eisenhower Administration, Immerman makes no mention of Dulles being part of the United Fruit Company's Board, although he does note that Sullivan & Cromwell had represented the company.[44]
Several failed assassination plots utilizing CIA-recruited operatives and anti-Castro Cubans directly against Castro undermined the CIA's credibility. The reputation of the agency and its director declined drastically after the Bay of Pigs Invasion fiasco of 1961. President Kennedy reportedly said he wanted to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds." However, following a "rigorous inquiry into the agency's affairs, methods, and problems ... [Kennedy] did not 'splinter' it after all and did not recommend Congressional supervision. Instead, President Kennedy transferred the CIA to the Department of Defense under the close supervision and control of the Joint Chiefs of Staff which would also report on CIA plans and operations to the President."[45]
Dismissal
[edit]Kennedy presents the National Security Medal to Dulles, November 28, 1961.
Later, after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, on November 29, 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Dulles as one of seven commissioners of the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of the U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Some historians later criticized the appointment, noting that Kennedy fired him. Therefore, he was unlikely to be impartial in passing the judgments charged to the Warren Commission. In the view of journalist and author Stephen Kinzer, Johnson appointed Dulles primarily so that Dulles could "coach" the Commission on how to interview CIA witnesses and what questions to ask because Johnson and Dulles were both anxious to ensure that the Commission did not discover Kennedy's secret involvement in the administration's illegal plans to assassinate Castro and other foreign leaders.[48][49]Robert F. Kennedy also urged Lyndon Johnson to put Allen Dulles on the Warren Commission most likely fearing revelation of Kennedy's clandestine involvement in Cuba.[50]
In the Blackford Oakes novels (1976–2005), a spy series written by William F. Buckley Jr., Dulles is portrayed in several books, acting in his role as director of the CIA.
The Commission (2003), a fictional film that depicts Dulles, played by Jack Betts, as a participant in the Warren Commission and investigator into the Kennedy assassination.
The Good Shepherd (2006), a fictional film in which William Hurt portrays the fictional head of the CIA, Phillip Allen, who appears to be based on Dulles.
Nick and Jake (2012), a novel co-written by Tad Richards and Jonathan Richards and published by Arcade Publishing. Allen Dulles is depicted as plotting a coup to overthrow the government of France.[54]
Dulles, Allen Welsh (May 10, 1965). Boudin, Michael; Breyer, Stephen (eds.). "Review: [Untitled]: Reviewed work: Communism and Revolution: The Strategic Use of Political Violence by Cyril E. Black, Thomas P. Thornton". Harvard Law Review. Vol. 78, no. 7. Cambridge, MA: The Harvard Law Review Association (Harvard Law School). pp. 1500–1502. doi:10.2307/1338919. ISSN0017-811X. JSTOR1338919. LCCN12032979. OCLC46968396.
Dulles, Allen Wells (1966). The Secret Surrender: The Classic Insider's Account of the Secret Plot to Surrender Northern Italy During WWII. Popular Library. Vol. 60 (1st ed.). Guilford, CT: Harper & Row. ISBN9789160042242.
^Richard Breitman et al. (2005). OSS Knowledge of the Holocaust. In: U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis. pp. 11–44. [Online]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Available from: Cambridge Books Online doi:10.1017/CBO9780511618178.006 [Accessed April 20, 2016]. page 25
Dulles, Allen Wells (1966). The Secret Surrender: The Classic Insider's Account of the Secret Plot to Surrender Northern Italy During WWII. Popular Library. Vol. 60 (1st ed.). Guilford, Connecticut, USA: Harper & Row. ISBN9789160042242.
Wardaya, Baskara T. "The Long Shadow of the Cold War: The Cold War Policies of the United States towards Asia and their Impact on Indonesia." International Quarterly for Asian Studies 52.3-4 (2021): 331–347.
