The Devil’s Chessboard audiobook

We often forget how fragile a creation democracy is—a delicate eggshell in the rough-and-tumble of history. Even in the cradle of democracy, ancient Athens, rule by the people could barely survive for a couple of centuries. And throughout its brief history, Athenian democracy was besieged from within by the forces of oligarchy and tyranny. There were secret clubs of aristocrats who hired squads of assassins to kill popular leaders. Terror reigned during these convulsions and civil society was too intimidated to bring the assassins to justice. Democracy, Thucydides tells us, was “cowed in mind."Our country’s cheerleaders are wedded to the notion of American exceptionalism. But when it comes to the machinations of power, we are all too similar to other societies and ones that have come before us. There is an implacable brutality to power that is familiar throughout the world and throughout history. And no matter where power rules, there is the same determination by those in high places to keep their activities hidden. Who killed JFK? In The Map That Changed the World, Simon Winchester wrote about William Smith, an 18th century canal digger who discovered that beneath the surface of the earth there were hidden layers of fossils, earth and stone that rose and fell connecting one to another and forming an understructure that told a tale of the earth’s history. He spent more than two decades gathering the information to prove his theory and eventually created the map of the book’s title. David Talbot entered into a considerable effort of subterranean digging himself, and has drawn a map of unseen layers that cross the planet and affect everything, a map that shows some of the hidden structures that lie beneath the world we think we know, the history we think we have experienced. The fossils in this case are pieces of evidence showing a history of secrets. When you look at the mass of dark deeds perpetrated by the United States in the latter half of the 20th century, there is one man, more than any other, who appears, Zelig-like, over and over again, Allan Dulles, the evidence of his deeds buried in the fossil accretions of our public and foreign policy past. His older brother, John Foster Dulles, would become a Secretary of State and wield considerable influence on his own. The pair formed a two-headed monster of foreign intrigue while in office at the same time. But the focus here is primarily on Allen DullesDavid Talbot - from Talbot's FB pagesThe Devil’s Chessboard reads like a riveting spy novel, peeling back layer after layer as it races to its climax. Dulles was a partner in an international law firm. Foster was chairman. Allen Dulles spent considerable swaths of time in government service, as a diplomat and spy. As such he made contacts all across Europe that would come in handy later. Foster Dulles became so deeply enmeshed in the lucrative revitalization of Germany that he found it difficult to separate his firm’s interests from that of the rising economic and military power—even after Hitler consolidated control of the country in the 1930s. Foster continued to represent German cartels like IG Farben as they were integrated into the Nazis’ growing war machine, helping the industrial giants secure access to key war materials. Nazi, schmazi. Foster kept the Berlin offices of the company, Sullivan and Cromwell, open until, in 1935, his partners forced him to shut it down, fearful of horrendous PR problems. Consider some nuggets dug from the accretions of Allen Dulles’s history:---WW II – he tries to arrange a separate peace with Nazi Germany despite specific orders from FDR to do no such thing, thus undermining the alliance between the US and Soviet Union, and contributing to suspicion between the Allies. ---Post WW II - he is instrumental in helping known Nazis and Nazi supporters hold on to their ill-gotten treasures and cash, and helps many either evade punishment or get reduced sentences and improved accommodations from the Nuremberg Courts---He manages a ratline, an underground railroad through which Nazis escape punishment and find comfortable resettlement in other parts of the world---Dulles uses some of these upstanding citizens to create an intelligence network---He creates an armed force in France, ostensibly to be used against an imagined Communist takeover, but ready to act in support of an anti-deGaulle coup fomented by generals angry at the government’s decision to step back from the Algerian conflict---Dulles is instrumental in staging the anti-Mossadegh coup in Iran, installing a reluctant Shah, who had to be dragged back into the country to take over ---He goes ahead with the Bay of Pigs invasion, knowing it will fail, but expecting that the failure would force JFK to commit the USA military to the plotThe list goes on, and on. Talbot proceeds like a prosecutor, laying out the details that set up the final argument. The litany of specifics, of events, of secret, illegal actions, is stunning.As you might expect, Allan Dulles was a person of questionable human quality, even to his family. His wife, in her diary wrote: “My husband doesn’t converse with me, not that he doesn’t talk to me about his business, but that he doesn’t talk about anything…It took me a long time to realize that when he talks it is only for the purpose of obtaining something…He talks easily with men who can give him some information, and puts himself out with women whom he doesn’t know to tell all sorts of interesting things. He either has to be making someone admire him, or to be receiving some information worth his while; otherwise he gives one the impression that he doesn’t talk at all because the person isn’t worth talking to.” He subjected his war-damaged son to bizarre medical treatment in a secret mind-control program he had established. He married his daughter off like a political bargaining chip.Allen W. Dulles - from Oathkeepers.org – Funny, he doesn’t look like a psycho-killerBut it is in his foreign intrigues, and in illumination of his ties to the rich and powerful, that the way is paved for the book’s payoff. It is David Talbot’s contention that Allan Dulles, acting in league with members of America’s business and military elite, orchestrated the murder of JFK. Kennedy was seen as particularly soft on foreign nations who dared to nationalize property owned by Dulles’s peeps. There were many in the military who were eager to get the next war on, the nuclear one, and Kennedy would not play. (Doctor Strangelove had nothing on these guys.) JFK had decided, because LBJ had failed to deliver the Southern votes he had promised, that he would find a replacement VP for his second term, so Johnson, beholden to Texas oilmen, and looking at the potential termination of his political life, was on board. JFK had also sacked Dulles for his insubordination. Not only was the Dallas murder a political hit, there had been an earlier attempt, in Chicago, in November 1963, that did not come off. The Warren Commission was set up not to investigate the killing but to cover it up. Bobby Kennedy knew this, but also knew that unless he could be elected to the Oval Office, the truth would remain cloaked. It is likely his determination to find the truth that got him killed too. The details Talbot offers to back his claim are compelling. I expect that the usual suspects will raise a hue and cry of that old favorite pejorative, “conspiracy theory.” But as we all do, or should know, sometimes there really is a conspiracy. I’m with Talbot on this one. The details of the sundry plots and executive actions, the coups, planned, executed, or foiled, the breadth of Talbot’s gaze make for gripping reading. And I didn’t even go into the CIA’s work in the mind-control biz, an early example of extraordinary rendition, or any of the juicier bits about our old friend Tricky Dick Nixon, or Castro’s stunning political success story in New York City. This is a compelling must-read, filled with colorful characters, intrigue, and a look at the creation and persistence of a mechanism by which an undercover foreign policy is implemented. You will wonder if, today, the White House has any more control over the intelligence apparatus than it did back then. It will change forever how you view history. During a 1965 tour of Latin America, Robert Kennedy—by then a senator from New York—found himself in a heated discussion about Rockefeller influence in Latin America, during an evening at the home of a Peruvian artist that had been arranged by [Richard] Goodwin [an RFK aide]. When Bobby brashly suggested to the gathering that Peru should “Assert [its] nationhood” and nationalize its oil industry, the group was stunned. “Why, David Rockefeller has just been down there,” one guest said. “And he told us there wouldn’t be any aid if anyone acted against International Petroleum [a local Standard Oil subsidiary].” “Oh, come on. David Rockefeller isn’t the government,” Bobby shot back, still playing the role of Kennedy family tough guy. “We Kennedys eat Rockefellers for breakfast.” The Kennedys were indeed more successful at the rough-and-tumble of politics than the Rockefellers. But, as JFK had understood, that was not the full story when it came to evaluating a family’s power. He fully appreciated that the Rockefellers held a unique place in the pantheon of American power, one rooted not so much within the democratic system as within what scholars would later refer to as “the deep state”—that subterranean network of financial, intelligence, and military interests that guided national policy no matter who occupied the White House. The Kennedys had risen from saloon-keepers and ward heelers to the top of American politics. But they were still overshadowed by the imperial power of the Rockefellers. There is no law, only power. Bobby Kennedy should have known that. We all need to know that. Rule by sociopaths is definitely not the way to go, whether the morally-challenged sit on corporate boards, manage branches of government or direct elements of our military. With The Devil’s Chessboard, David Talbot has written an eye-opening and devastating look at modern American history. Your move.Review Posted – October 16, 2015Book Published – October 13, 2015 (hc) - September 6, 2016 (tp)=============================EXTRA STUFFLinks to the author’s Twitter and FB pagesAn interesting site on keeping up with developments re the JFK hit Talbot interview in Mother JonesLest anyone think the CIA is not in the business of killing, here is the CIA manual on assassination 101 – A Study of Assassination. There will be a quiz.Amy Goodman interviews Dulles on Democracy Now - Thanks to Natylie for the heads up on this oneTalbot interview with Tavis Smiley - November 16, 2015

It was depressing, I need to think about this before I write a full review. Two thoughts that did come through were that: 1. I need to donate more money to Bernie Sanders presidential campaign today! 2. I'm 60 years old, my parents and grandparents generations created this mess, all staunch Republicans, which among them actively participated in making this disaster and which were just dupes?Finally, this does sort of finish off a lifetime of reading books and magazine articles about the JFK assassination.

Very much enjoyed this book. Entertaining, albeit incredibly disturbing (that is if everything claimed in this book is proven to be true!).I have to offer this statement first: when it comes to CIA history, the deep state, and the history of the Kennedy assassination, in many respects I'm a blank slate. I don't know many of the facts, many of the details. I'm inclined to believe the worst though (those who operate in the shadows often have little checks on their power, no accountability to the public, which is very dangerous and can bring out the worst in human nature). But certain extraordinary claims do require extraordinary evidence, and even if I'm somewhat inclined to lap up what is being served in this book because it fulfills my bias I still am cognizant there may be deep flaws in the evidence here. This is one of the first books I've read that gets into CIA history in a nuts and bolts manner, while also delving into the Kennedy assassination (final third of the book). The author, David Talbot, seems to have conducted exhaustive research, many of his claims and arguments are backed by facts (uh, I think?). So while I'm marked by his arguments, I need to emphasize that I'm kind of a blank slate here and liable to be very impressed by the first cogent argument I come across on these subjects, of which Talbot's is for me. He offers some pretty astounding assertions and arguments, many of which I have no idea as to how much water they hold. The evidence and argument he crafts, the narrative of the CIA being behind the Kennedy assassination with Dulles playing a prime role? uh, yeah that seems eminently plausible to me. But then again, while I don't know much CIA history I'm certainly inclined to believe the worst about that agency and its shady history and machinations, that's my bias, and it is a strong one. Not to say that there aren't incredibly moral and good people who serve and have served this agency, and it does serve a purpose (although one could question why we should have an agency of this type operating outside of military structure and purview). But given its secretive nature, lack of strong oversight and accountability, I'd say it is an organization that is particularly vulnerable to corrosive unscrupulous undertakings.The problem is Talbot does rely on some circumstantial flimsy evidence at times, and some weak witnesses: for instance the testimony of Howard Hunt's son, St. John. He is an incredibly weak and flawed witness imo. Talbot does not really acknowledge this, he presents this guy's evidence without any caveats. Here's an article on his son and Hunt I came across, it is interesting. http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/f... There are some good critiques of this book as well. I'd take everything with a grain of salt, especially the Kennedy assassination stuff. Here's a nice review of someone who seems to know a thing or two about this history, provides a counterbalance: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...It's hard for me to parse how deeply biased Talbot might be. He certainly doesn't like Dulles or the CIA (I don't blame him for that though haha). How much he is cherry-picking his facts and information to craft his narrative, how solid are certain testimonials, what are the various hidden motivations and agendas of various witnesses? I honestly don't know but I would sure as heck want deep background info on each witness to establish their credibility. I do know the CIA had a big hand in various overthrows of democratically elected governments and was intimately connected with large multinationals and did their bidding. This is the least controversial stuff to me in this book, mostly covered in the first half: overthrows and attempted overthrows in Guatemala, Congo, Iran, France, CIA links to Nazis. Yadda yadda. In effect the CIA is fundamentally undemocratic, and serves (at least served, in the period of Dulles' time and beyond) to maintain and expand the powers of an oligarchic elite.Regardless of how accurate or not this book is, it is damn entertaining and very well-written. I highly recommend it. I'd say this book is a mix of the documented known aspects of our history with various conjecture propped up by circumstantial evidence, some more solid some more speculative. Like I've mentioned, separating what's what is tricky for me. One interesting aspect of the book was the window into the the inner-workings, power struggles, and inner-office politics of the CIA. That was really neat stuff.Would love for my buddies that know this part of American history and have some knowledge of CIA history to read this book. It'd be great to hear your critique and analysis of David Talbot's narrative and evidence.

A sobering tale of historyThis is one of those books that yields mountains of information and enlightenment but leaves you feeling cold when you reach the end. I doubt none of it is false; I say with sorrow.

This is an extremely well-researched history of Allen Dulles and how he affected the period of history from the end of WWII until his death. Dulles was an evil, psychopathic man who considered himself and the CIA, his agency, the real power in the United States. Even after JFK fired him for his machinations around the Bay of Pigs, during which he dared JFK to provide air cover and possibly Marine support for a mission that failed, and, had it been successful, might well have touched off WWIII, Dulles continued to run a shadow CIA that circumvented and frequently opposed the wishes of the presidents of the United States. The fact of his being the ultimate prime mover of the JFK assassination fits perfectly with what I've read about the assassination, and I've read more than 50 books on it. In fact, it was the fecklessness of the press (which continues today) that made me decide to go into journalism 40 years ago. Whether it was the number of CIA assets in the press, or whether one of Dulles's black ops fixers terrified the mainstream media into buying the ridiculous conclusions of the Warren Report, the whole "conventional" narrative was immediately laid down by the government powers that tried to create a case that Lee Harvey Oswald was a "lone nut," with communist ties (oooh, that's about as bad a person as you can be in 1963) and Jack Ruby killed him because he felt so bad about Jackie having to come back to Dallas for Oswald's trial (sure he did).The government's seizure of the Zapruder film and its rearranging of the frames to better support the "lone gunman from behind" narrative (which is documented in the late James Fetzer's book Assassination Science) is only a small part of the elaborate cover-up that the government has done, starting with The Warren Report, to try to bully its narrative into the public consciousness.If you ask most Americans today who have an opinion on the JFK assassination how it really happened, you will no doubt get a wide variety of answers, but rarely will you get the most definitive answer that was ever articulated, which was the 1977 House Subcommittee's Report on the JFK assassination, which concluded that there was also a gunman in front of JFK at the Grassy Knoll, meaning that there WAS a conspiracy. The nature of a conspiracy is more than one person getting together to do something, which the House Subcommittee established in its 1977 report. Yet, for decades, anyone questioning the lone-nut theory has been denounced as a "conspiracy nut."Well, guess what, guys? THERE WAS A CONSPIRACY in that there were at least two shooters.The government first tried to dismiss this fact by not letting the public ever see the Zapruder film, and at first only allowing highly placed journalists see it and describe it verbally. I watched a clip of the Zapruder film narrated by Dan Rather (or at least his narration from the version he'd seen) and during the head shot, he said blatantly that JFK's head "moved forward with considerable force." This narration described the head shot, which was clearly from the front and the grassy knoll side.Although a huge number of books have been written trying to get to the "real" story of what happened in Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963, few of them were reviewed in the mainstream media, and other, fraudulent books like "Case Closed" by Gerald Posner (1993) were thrust upon the unsuspecting and confused public to try to buttress up the official Warren Commission conclusions. The most well-known film about the assassination, JFK, by Oliver Stone, was ripped universally by the mainstream media (cover line from Newsweek: JFK, How Oliver Stone Gets It Wrong)If you even look at the rearranged Zapruder film, it is possible to see that the head shot was clearly a near-simultaneous hit from two weapons at the right front. Even John Connally, who was sitting in front of JFK and was also hit, to his dying day refused to believe the "magic bullet" theory that had JFK and he were hit with the same bullet--the almost pristine bullet (exhibit 399 in Warren Report) that was found on a stretcher at Dallas hospital.I could go on forever on this subject, but I will only say that this book is one of the most important books of the last few decades. If you are at all interested in history, this is the one book you should read this year. If you'd like to be enlightened about the multifarious things that American intelligence has done up to today, read this book. If you want to be enlightened about how America really works and has worked in the last half-century, read this book. At any rate, READ THIS BOOK!

David Talbot’s The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government chillingly documents Allen Dulles’s role in the rise of what is often called the “deep state,” the unelected militaristic bureaucracy within the federal government that kills and tortures people, topples legitimate rulers, orders drone strikes, and basically does anything it wants to fortify the American empire without much oversight by elected officials. The most startling claim in Talbot’s very readable 620-page book is that former CIA Director Allen Dulles plotted and personally oversaw the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. While he finds no smoking gun, Talbot spins a web of incriminating information to support his claim.Talbot portrays Allen Welch Dulles as a bright, cunning, ambitious, superficially charming man who was not much interested in money but who coveted and ruthlessly exercised power. A minister’s son, Allen Dulles became a lawyer and secured a place at the top of Sullivan and Cromwell, a law firm headed by his brother John Foster Dulles who later became secretary of state. Through a network of corporations, banks, and financiers, Sullivan and Cromwell helped German industry rebuild after World War I and opposed President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.Recruited in 1941 to the Office of Strategic Services or OSS, America’s wartime spy agency, Allen Dulles functioned as an American spy in Switzerland but remained sympathetic to Germany. Like many in America’s business elite, Dulles believed that America’s real enemy was its wartime ally the Soviet Union. Despite President Franklin Roosevelt’s desire to try high-ranking Nazis, Dulles helped bring former Nazi officials into the American-backed West German intelligence service and greased the way for other Nazis to escape prosecution down “ratlines” through Spain and South America. Dulles joined the Central Intelligence Agency founded by President Harry Truman as an overseas information-gathering organ of the state, and helped it morph into something similar to the OSS which was disbanded at the end of the war.When Dwight Eisenhower was elected president, Allen Dulles was appointed to head the CIA and his brother, John Foster Dulles, became Secretary of State. Given a long leash to fight Communism by Eisenhower, the CIA engaged in horrible “mind control” experiments, consorted with mobsters, and arrogantly toppled legitimate governments in countries such as Guatemala, Iran, and the Congo. Legitimate leaders were arrested, tortured, intimidated, and assassinated with the help of the CIA. One of the most stunning of these involved a military coup and attempted assassination of French President Charles de Gaulle which occurred shortly after President John F. Kennedy was elected, for which Kennedy apologized to de Gaulle.Kennedy wanted the United States to align itself with rising democratic movements in former colonies and South America, in the tradition of the American revolution. In his speeches and actions Kennedy worked to make this worldview a part of his New Frontier. Kennedy retained Dulles as head of the CIA but came to regret retaining the man CIA insiders called “the Old Man.” The Bay of Pigs, the CIA’s half-assed attempt to invade Cuba with a motley crew of Cubans trained by the CIA, was planned by Dulles under Eisenhower and its failure soured Kennedy on the CIA.The landing party at the Bay of Pigs was quickly rounded up and captured. Dulles apparently believed the new president would order an invasion of Cuba when the invasion predictably faltered. Instead, Kennedy refused to send troops into Cuba and took responsibility for the failed invasion.When Russian missiles were found in Cuba not long after that, Kennedy again resisted pressure for a military attack on Cuba and instead got on the phone with Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev to work out a deal.Kennedy fired Dulles after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, but Talbot documents how completely Dulles remained in the swim of things after being fired. Dulles gathered around him a sort of government in exile, receiving briefings, entertaining underlings, and basically acting as if he was still running the CIA where many spooks remained loyal to him.The entire weekend of Kennedy’s assassination, Dulles stayed at “the Farm,” an alternate CIA command headquarters at Camp Peary, Virginia, Talbor describes as a sort of black site where Dulles had built himself a comfortable home.While at the Farm, Talbot suggests, Dulles helped orchestrate the events of the tumultuous weekend in Dallas which included Kennedy’s assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald’s arrest, Oswald’s assassination by the mobster Jack Ruby, and Kennedy’s body snatched from the hospital in Dallas and rushed back to Washington for a questionable autopsy. According to Talbot, Dulles lobbied hard to be appointed to the Warren Commission, which looked into the circumstances of Kennedy’s death. Since he was the only person on the commission without a day job, and a seasoned political manipulator, Dulles took virtual control of the commission and his heavy hand may be seen in its results, which found no conspiracy and concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Talbot presents information to show that Oswald was indeed a patsy, as Oswald asserted before being shot. He shows some ways in which the well-connected former CIA director worked to manage the news in the United States as troubling information came out. Talbot asserts that Dulles may have feared the wrath of Bobby Kennedy, who was assassinated in Los Angeles in 1968 as he ran for president. According to forensic reports, the bullet that killed Robert Kennedy was fired into the back of his head at point blank range and thus could not have been fired by the alleged assassin Sirhan Sirhan, who attacked from the front and was convicted of the crime. Talbot presents Allen Dulles as a man of the upper classes who was ambitious and capable of anything. Married with mistress, Dulles’s wife called him “the Shark.” Time after time, Talbot’s book asserts, the Shark got away with murder.

In July 1957, Senator John F. Kennedy gave a speech which included the following predictions: "The most powerful single force in the world today is neither communism nor capitalism, neither the H-bomb nor the guided missile--it is man's eternal desire to free and independent. The great enemy of that tremendous force of freedom is called, for want of a more precise term, imperialism--and today that means Soviet imperialism and, whether we like it or not, Western imperialism. Thus, the single most important test of American foreign policy today is how we meet the challenge of imperialism, what we do to further man's desire to be free. On this test more than any other, this nation shall be critically judged by the uncommitted millions in Asia and Africa, and anxiously watched by the still hopeful lovers of freedom behind the iron curtain. If we fail to meet the challenge of either Soviet or Western imperialism, then no amount of foreign aid, no aggrandizement of armaments, no new pacts or doctrines or high-level conferences can prevent further setbacks to our course and to our security." This quote appeared in David Talbot's long book The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government, which was the selection of the Music Hall in April which I could not attend due to a conflict at school, but I do wish I had been able to hear that discussion! Talbot's research is enormous, and the arguments he presents very persuasive. It is mesmerizing to read half a century later about the hidden forces shaping the world from WWII on, leading up to and beyond the clearly non-transparent events surrounding the Kennedy assassination... and that of other elected officials of the world. I am not drawn to the conspiracy theory mind set, as one can become totally paranoid... but the true forces behind too much in this world are greed and power. Money speaks unfortunately, although word spin (and more and more in the age of modern media) plays a huge role in creating a complacent and/or fearful society. Great read.

An essential book if you want to understand post -WWII American history. The National Security Act of 1947 fundamentally changed America from a historian's perspective. Once the Government began to classify much of what it did as top secret, the official, overt public account of things came to be grossly insufficient. An understanding of the covert workings of the Secret Government became essential as well. David Talbot does an excellent job of supplying a narrative that connects Allen Dulles' Nazi sympathies and fascist leanings before and during the war to the present fascist uprising in the USA. A gripping read, and very well researched and sourced.Put this one at or near the top of your "Must read" list.

This book is so incredible that I can’t quite find a way to write a review. It chronicles the (mis)deeds of the CIA under Allen Dulles, who is one of the most evil f***ers to ever walk the earth. What is chronicled in this book is verifiably true, but so unbelievable that I wish it weren’t true. At any rate, this book is well-written and researched.

There is a ton of historical info here. Much of it is disturbing, if true, but I have to remind myself when reading books like this that I'm not 100% positive I am reading the facts.

If you’re familiar with mid-twentieth century American history, you’ll know the name Allen Dulles (1893-1969), who served as the director of the CIA through the tense years of the Eisenhower Administration and remained in office until John F. Kennedy fired him in 1961. Now, investigative journalist David Talbot has written an eye-opening new biography of the man.The historical record reveals a great deal about Dulles’ career in espionage, highlighting his central role in the overthrow of the Iranian and Guatemalan governments in 1953 and 54, in the notorious MKULTRA program that administered mind-altering drugs to unwitting subjects in at least seven countries, and in the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961. Recently, The Brothers, Stephen Kinzer’s dual biography of Dulles and his older brother, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, also spotlighted the two men’s unsavory roles in funneling American capital to help build Hitler’s Germany and in the CIA’s attempts to assassinate Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, Sukarno in Indonesia, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, and Fidel Castro in Cuba.Now, Talbot has delved more deeply into the record and taken a far more critical look at Dulles’ career in The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government. The picture that emerges is shattering.The most powerful men in AmericaDuring the seven years that Allen Dulles served as CIA director while his big brother was Secretary of State (1953-59), the two held sway virtually unchallenged at the helm of U.S. foreign policy. From the outset, Dwight Eisenhower was a disengaged President, favoring the golf course over the White House, and in the second term of his administration he was sidelined even more frequently by serious illness. These were the years of Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s alcohol-fueled rampage through the U.S. government, when rabid anti-Communism infected the military, academia, and the news media as well as government, and the reactionary John Birch Society built a nationwide network of chapters with more than 100,000 members. Foster Dulles’ nuclear brinksmanship was the order of the day. And his younger brother was left free to pursue his own course at the CIA, free from scrutiny or moral scruples. In many ways, the two were the most powerful men in America. Talbot sums up the case in stark terms: “In the name of defending the free world from Communist tyranny, they would impose an American reign on the world enforced by nuclear terror and cloak-and-dagger brutality.”The untold story of Allen DullesFrom the perspective of more than half a century, now that once-classified records are gradually being opened, it’s difficult not to conclude that Allen Dulles’ virtually unchallenged reign at the CIA was an unparalleled disaster. Previously published books and articles have brought a number of extremely unflattering revelations to light. To my knowledge, though, only David Talbot has put all the pieces together in The Devil’s Chessboard:Dulles and his brother Foster didn’t just help their law clients finance the Third Reich. Though they publicly disavowed the Nazi regime shortly before war broke out, they helped high-ranking German officials to launder looted funds through Switzerland throughout and after World War II. (Dulles headed the Office of Strategic Services, the OSS office in Bern during the war, so he was in a perfect position to continue to help his former clients and their German partners.) Talbot notes: “Dulles was more in step with many Nazi leaders than he was with President Roosevelt.”In the final stages of the war, Dulles defied Allied strategic policy and direct orders from Roosevelt. He negotiated a separate surrender of Nazi forces in Italy with the high-ranking SS general who ran the Gestapo there. When Italian partisans began closing in on the general’s hideout, Dulles organized a rescue mission. The general he snatched from the clutches of the Resistance was Heinrich “Himmler’s top troubleshooter, [who] frequently intervened to ensure the smooth efficiency of the extermination process,” the Nazis’ “Final Solution.” Nonetheless, Dulles repeatedly took action to prevent him from prosecution at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. As Talbot reports, “Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, who as a young lawyer served with Allen in the OSS, later declared that both Dulleses were guilty of treason.”The general was far from the only Nazi official whom Dulles saved from justice. Using OSS staff members who reported to him, Dulles helped smuggle an untold number of Nazi criminals to South America, the United States, and elsewhere around the world through the so-called “ratlines” established by ODESSA, the secret organization of former SS officers. He also took part in the OSS’ Operation Paperclip, the notorious clandestine operation under which the U.S. smuggled more than fifteen hundred German scientists, engineers, and technicians to the United States to work in rocketry, biological and chemical weapons, and other fields. Many of the scientists were committed Nazis, some of them war criminals. And Dulles personally engineered the extraction of Reinhard Gehlen, the SS general who ran military intelligence for the Nazis on the Eastern Front. Gehlen, too, would have been in the dock at Nuremberg were it not for Dulles’ protection. He arranged for the Nazi spy to establish an anti-Soviet espionage network for the U.S., employing a large number of other Nazis; later, with Dulles’ support, Gehlen took over the new West German intelligence agency.Still under Dulles’ leadership in April 1961, the CIA colluded with right-wing French officers in a plot to assassinate Charles de Gaulle. The plot had been organized by the OAS, the secret paramilitary organization that attempted to prevent Algeria’s independence from France. As Talbot notes, “Allen Dulles was once again making his own [foreign] policy, this time in France.” The plot was thwarted only after President Kennedy personally warned de Gaulle’s ambassador to the U.S. that the CIA might be involved. Kennedy ordered U.S. base commanders in France to disguise the landing strips where the OAS might land its planes from Algeria, and de Gaulle mobilized the French citizenry to oppose the conspirators through strikes and other actions.But these (and a great many other) crimes pale in comparison with Dulles’ role in the Bay of Pigs disaster and in the behind-the-scenes maneuvering that followed his termination by President Kennedy. Much of what Talbot writes about this period brings new evidence into the light of day.The secret government meets resistanceUnder President Eisenhower, the CIA directed by Allen Dulles operated with little oversight. Though the president was uncomfortable after the fact with some of the agency’s more egregious operations, he did nothing to rein in Dulles. Even the director’s brother, the Secretary of State, often found himself in the dark. Few in Congress were aware of the extent to which the CIA was manipulating events around the world. The agency operated in such secrecy that it’s possible some members of Congress didn’t even know of its existence. But the insular existence of the CIA under Dulles’ direction began to unravel following the election of John F. Kennedy.It’s well known that the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion was planned during the final years of Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency and that the newly elected president only reluctantly allowed it to continue. It’s also widely believed that the invasion failed because President Kennedy refused to authorize air cover for the dissident CIA-trained Cubans of the invading force. However, as Talbot reveals, the truth is far different from the popular belief. Even an internal investigation by the CIA brought many of the facts to light. “It is now clear that the CIA’s Bay of Pigs expedition was not simply doomed to fail, it was meant to fail. And its failure was designed to trigger the real action — an all-out, U.S. military invasion of the island.” Dulles fully expected that his hard-line allies who ran the Pentagon and staffed the National Security Council would force the new president to approve the action. Kennedy’s refusal to do so caused the distrust for him within the military and the CIA to harden into hatred. Their opposition to him grew even more bitter when he fired Dulles a few months later.The secret government strikes backTalbot explains, “Dulles had been deposed, but his reign continued.” He remained a darling of the establishment press, especially Henry Luce’s magazine empire and The New York Times, and the largely unchanged leadership of the CIA held frequent meetings with Dulles in his Georgetown home. Kennedy blundered by appointing Dulles ally John McCone to succeed him and leaving most of the agency’s leadership in place. Dulles’ acolytes, Richard Helms and James Jesus Angleton, continued to dominate the CIA. Operations continued in secret, outside the oversight of the White House. As Talbot makes clear, “it was a mood of hatred and rage.” In this explosive atmosphere, Kennedy’s decision to lower the tension over Cuba following the near-catastrophe of the Cuban Missile Crisis proved fatal. “This marked the fateful turning point when the rabid, CIA-sponsored activity that had been aimed at Castro shifted its focus to Kennedy.”In Part Three of The Devil’s Chessboard, about one-third of the book, Talbot concentrates on the evidence about CIA involvement in the assassination of JFK. Much of what he reports is based on his own interviews and on documents that came to light only decades after the event. He writes, “Those resolute voices in American public life that continue to deny the existence of a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy argue that ‘someone would have talked.’ This line of reasoning is often used by journalists who have made no effort themselves to closely inspect the growing body of evidence and have not undertaken any of their own investigative reporting . . . The official version of the Kennedy assassination — despite its myriad improbabilities, which have only grown more inconceivable with time — remains firmly embedded in the media consciousness, as unquestioned as the law of gravity. In fact, many people have talked during the past half of a century — including some directly connected to the plot against Kennedy.”There is now abundant evidence that high-ranking CIA officials orchestrated the murder and the cover-up that followed. Dulles himself appears to have been fully informed. Talbot reveals much of what is now known about the plot in The Devil’s Chessboard. Corroborating evidence has been published elsewhere, most notably in another remarkable book, Mary’s Mosaic, published in 2012. Two other books I’ve recently reviewed, Top Secret America and National Security and Double Government, probe the consequences of the secret government that Allen Dulles conjured into being.About the authorDavid Talbot is best known as the founder and editor-in-chief of the online magazine Salon. The Devil’s Chessboard is the fourth of the nonfiction books he has written in recent years after he left work as a reporter for newspapers and magazines.

Of all the works of non-fiction I've read thus far this year, "THE DEVIL'S CHESSBOARD: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government" is one of the most profound, sobering, well-researched, and revelatory books I've ever read. At 640 pages, this is a book that demands of the reader a full and earnest commitment. But one should not be deterred by the scope of this book. It has lots of substance to it, is highly readable, and will provide the reader with invaluable insights into how the CIA and by extension the national security state within a state - which is undergirded by Wall Street and a coterie of academics, civilian, political & military officials, and conservative-minded monied elites - have exerted for decades a pervasive, coercive power and influence over the U.S. government. Allen Dulles (1893-1969) stands out in this book as the exemplar of the master power broker, and untiring promoter of "America's Secret Government." Born the second son of a Protestant minister boasting of ancestors who had had distinguished careers in the law, military, and politics (an uncle served as Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson), Dulles, a Princeton graduate, went on to become a diplomat during the First World War, serving in the U.S. embassy in Bern, Switzerland. After the war, he served (along with his older brother John Foster Dulles) with the American delegation at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, earned a law degree from George Washington University in 1926, and (with John Foster Dulles) built a lucrative career in New York with Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the most powerful law firms in the country. He also ingratiated himself with many social, economic, and political interests in the U.S. and Europe during the interwar years. Both he and John Foster were staunch Republicans who were vigorously anti-New Deal.With America's entry into the Second World War, Allen Dulles managed to get an appointment with the country's wartime spy agency, the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) as head of the OSS office in Bern from 1942 to war's end. He proceeded to establish his own fiefdom, concerned himself with re-establishing contacts in Occupied France and Germany with former business associates, and even defied FDR's official policy of unconditional surrender through helping to quietly arrange - with the help of high ranking SS officers Karl Wolff and Eugen Dollmann (both of them war criminals that Dulles protected postwar from prosecution) - a separate peace in Italy on May 2, 1945 (six days before the unconditional surrender of all German forces in Europe). Dulles certainly should have been relieved of his OSS position or reprimanded. But he had his protectors in different areas of the federal government who shared Dulles' political beliefs and uncompromising anti-Communism. So, he was well-protected through most of his public service career, which reached its height during the Eisenhower years, when he was made CIA Director. Much of the nefarious and shady activities for which the CIA became known were developed and encouraged by Allen Dulles. Examples: the 1953 coup in Iran (the CIA overthrew a popularly elected nationalist government and put Shah Reza Pahlavi back on the throne), the 1954 coup in Guatemala (another "success" with the ouster of the freely elected Jacobo Arbenz leftist progressive government and replacing it with a military junta supportive of U.S. interests), the MKULTRA program (a top secret mind control research project that often used ordinary citizens as unwitting guinea pigs), and Operation Mockingbird - a program through which the CIA poured millions of dollars to influence the output and distribution of news by media organizations throughout the U.S. and the West. At the same time, John Foster Dulles served as Secretary of State, exerting an uncompromising anti-Soviet, iron-fisted grip over U.S. foreign policy til his death from stomach cancer in 1959. Eisenhower pretty much gave Allen Dulles a free hand in running the CIA. So long as broad policy goals and objectives as developed in Washington were met, that is what mattered most. The U.S. developed during the 1950s an informal empire on the cheap, which was "a product of Ike's desire to avoid another large-scale shooting war as well as the imperial burdens that had bankrupted Great Britain."With the election of John F. Kennedy as President in 1960 and the coming of the New Frontier a year later, a sea change took place in Washington. Allen Dulles didn't think much of Kennedy's capacity for leadership, dismissing him as too young and inexperienced to run his Administration. Following the failure of the Bay of Pigs undertaking (which was created during the waning days of the Eisenhower Administration and enlisted support from anti-Castro Cuban exiles and elements of the Mafia, which had lost its gambling monopoly in Cuba once Castro had closed down all the gambling casinos and nationalized mob-owned property; from the book, I learned how badly planned the operation was - that surprised me!; Dulles had anticipated Kennedy using the U.S. military to mount a full-scale invasion of the island and thus ensure the success of the CIA plan) --- for which President Kennedy assumed full responsibility (as a result, his approval ratings shot upward to 83%) --- JFK "took ... steps [by early 1962] to signal that the Dulles era was over and that the CIA would no longer be allowed to run wild; he placed overseas agents under the control of U.S. ambassadors and shifted responsibility for future paramilitary operations like the Bay of Pigs to the Pentagon. It was the Kennedy brothers, not the Dulles brothers, who now ran Washington."President Kennedy would remove Dulles from his post at the CIA in November 1961. But Allen Dulles did not go quietly into that good night. As always, he "saw himself as above the nation's laws and elected leaders, manipulating and subverting American presidents in the pursuit of his personal interests and those of the wealthy elite he counted as his friends and clients." President Kennedy would make a lot of enemies among the Wall Street cliques and business interests who came to see him as a national security threat. His handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis and his "Peace Speech" at American University (June 10th, 1963) proved to be the last straw. Within the secret state, a clear consensus emerged: "For the good of the country, [President Kennedy] must be removed. And Dulles was the only man with the stature, connections, and decisive will to make something of this enormity happen. He had already assembled a killing machine to operate overseas. Now he prepared to bring it home to Dallas. All that his establishment colleagues had to do was to look the other way - as they always did when Dulles took executive action."Should the reader of this critique opt to read "The Devil's Chessboard", I leave it to him/her to reach their own conclusions about Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Secret Government that is with us still.

Glad to finally be finished with this absolute doorstop of a book. It was a long read, but also a gratifying one. I'll admit it started a little slow. The World War II section where Dulles played an active role in protecting Nazi war criminals and finding new gigs for them in Cold War intelligence was honestly a bit of a snooze. The same goes for the section on the Eisenhower era. But I really appreciated that long slow walk through the 1940s and '50s for the insight it afforded to the main event: The Kennedy years. I bought this book to learn more about Dulles's role in the assassination and I did not feel disappointed. This notion that we can never know what really happened with the whys and wherefores of the conspiracy to kill the president is completely misguided and wrong. Names like James Angleton, Howard Hunt, and most especially Allen Dulles have been right in front of us the whole time. Read this book if you'd like to know more.

Fascinating look into the creation of the CIA and how it’s directors, especially the iconic Allen Dulles, fought covert wars abroad, assassinated foreign dignitaries, staged coups and how they eventually engaged in these activities at home in the US.tl;dr Allen Dulles orchestrated the death of President John F Kennedy.

A monumentally depressing epic. I don’t think I’ve read a work of history that has changed my perspective on the past as drastically as this book.