Allen Dulles: Television Interview on the Soviets’ Intentions

About the Author

Allen W. Dulles was born on April 7, 1893, in Watertown, New York, one of five children brought up in a family dedicated to public service. Dulles was related to two secretaries of state, John W. Foster and Robert Lansing. Allen's brother John Foster later became secretary of state in the administration of Dwight Eisenhower. Dulles earned B.A. and M.A. degrees from Princeton (in 1914 and 1916, respectively) and then entered the diplomatic service, attending peace negotiations at the end of World War I and serving in various posts in European capitals. When he returned to Washington, D.C., in 1922, he began attending law school at George Washington University; he graduated in 1926 and joined the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, where his brother John Foster Dulles was a managing partner.

Not a litigator, Dulles specialized in helping the firm's clients with their international business. His office was on Wall Street, and while living in New York City he joined the Council on Foreign Relations. He also continued to take government assignments, representing the U.S. government at the League of Nations armament conference in 1932–1933. During World War II, Dulles joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This new position marked his departure from conventional diplomacy, as he now began a career as a covert operative, penetrating the German Foreign Ministry and gathering information about the 1944 assassination attempt on the German leader Adolf Hitler. For the next eight years Dulles continued to work on intelligence matters, engaging in covert operations as well as in considerable assessment of the CIA as an organization. In 1953, President Eisenhower named Dulles director of the CIA.

Dulles became an activist, initiating operations to destabilize governments in Iran and Guatemala that were deemed threats to U.S. security. Similar efforts to drive Fidel Castro from power in Cuba, however, failed in the infamous Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Shortly thereafter Dulles resigned as director of the CIA. In retirement, Dulles wrote several books about spying and intelligence gathering and served on the Warren Commission, established by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Dulles did not merely write for his colleagues and speak to fellow professionals—as he did in his Foreign Affairs articles and interviews. His appearances on television, his public speeches, and his books aimed at a general audience made him in the popular mind one of the country's master spies and a foremost authority on the cold war. In 1963 he published The Craft of Intelligence, considered one of the classics in the field. In 1968 he edited the volume Great True Spy Stories.

Dulles's most notable contributions, perhaps, were his understanding of developments in Germany—both before and after World War II—and his dedication to countering the Soviet threat, especially in the form of propaganda and efforts of the Soviet intelligence agencies to undermine the will of the Western governments to oppose Communist infiltrations of governments in Europe, Asia, and South and Central America. Dulles's speeches and interviews focused on mobilizing the efforts of government and other public leaders as well as the population at large to oppose the spread of Communism and the power of the Soviet Union.