The Devil's Chessboard - David Talbot

The book concerns itself mostly with the life of Allen Dulles, who was the official head of the CIA during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations up to the Bay of Pigs, and as described in this book, the unofficial head for several years afterwards.

So this covers Dulles' life in international intrigue, from his days of shielding former SS officers* from war crimes tribunals, to helping bring about the downfall of democratically elected governments in Iran and Guatemala, through the Bay of Pigs, when it appears Dulles tried to mislead Kennedy into believing the small force that was dropped off there would be able to complete a takeover without further assistance from the U.S. military, even though that was ludicrous. The argument is that Dulles figured it would be easier to convince JFK of this, then pressure him into providing air strikes when things started to go bad, than to sell the President on having air support right from the start.

The last third of the book is focused heavily on JFK's assassination, and the large amount of curious coincidences that surround it when it comes to the CIA. The FBI and CIA both abruptly dropping Oswald from their watchlists a few weeks prior, or how easily Oswald was able to regain his citizenship after loudly renouncing it when he traveled to the Soviet Union (despite limited funds). Some of what Talbot puts forward seems a bit too sketchy and far-reaching - 'this lady was introduced to Oswald and his wife through a old Russian noble who worked for the CIA, and her family just happened to be old acquaintances of an old confederate/mistress of Dulles' - but there's a whole lot of smoke there. Still, the book bogs down in that stretch, although if you're more interested in what happened in Dallas, it might go differently for you.

Given the apparent disregard for democracy and the will of the people Dulles demonstrates throughout his life, it isn't hard to see him doing in the United States what he helped bring about in other countries around the world.

The thing about Dulles is, he always seemed to know who to kiss up to. He knew how to make himself appear useful to people with money or power, so they'd support him being placed in positions of power, and then he would make sure to take care of them. Destroying inconvenient financial records for companies that were dealing with Nazis, or eliminating leaders of other countries that were being suitably deferential to American business interests. In turn, those people are the ones who tell Eisenhower that there's nothing wrong with the appointing the brother of his Secretary of State (John Foster Dulles) to be the head of the CIA. And then Dulles would surround himself with like-minded people that were intensely loyal to him and his ideas. So even once JFK sacks him, Dulles is still in the loop because he has so many people in the CIA that look up to him and come to him for advice, and he has his money and power connections to get himself on the Warren Commission.

Even when Dulles does something I would nominally support, like telling Joe McCarthy to pound sand when he tries to subpoena one of Dulles' guys, he does so in a way that puts my teeth on edge. In this case, essentially pulling the old "interests of national security" dodge as a reason why his people couldn't possibly speak in open court before Congress. The public can't know what the CIA is up to, which means they are beholden and accountable to no one. Not anything terribly new, but it's interesting how it's expanded and evolved over time (a point Talbot alludes to periodically when noting Dulles meeting with future lying shithead Donald Rumsfeld).

One thing I kept coming back to as I read was Michael Burleigh's Small Wars, Faraway Places, which I reviewed three years ago. Burleigh and Talbot have almost entirely opposite views on Eisenhower and JFK (as much as Burleigh loves Ike, Talbot loves the Kennedys more). But as you would expect, Dulles is a much bigger player in Talbot's book than in Burleigh's. The latter tends to portray the big decisions about whether to assassinate Castro or Patrice Lumumba as being the President's call, while Talbot strongly suggests that Dulles was running around authorizing executions without bothering to get the OK from the man in the Oval Office, regardless of who that was.

'Dulles's defiance of McCarthy won the widespread devotion of liberals, but it established a dangerous precedent. In his very first year as director, Dulles began molding an image of the CIA as a super agency operating high above mere senators. The CIA would grow more powerful and less accountable with each passing year of Dulles's reign.'

* I find Dulles' insistence they needed to protect the Nazis so they could help fight the Soviets to be a bad joke. Yes, the Nazis fought the Soviets, and their asses were ultimately sent scurrying back to their own country, the Red Army hot on their heels. You really need to keep Nazis alive so they can give you a brilliant strategy like, "Kill everyone in Russia"? Because that was basically the Nazis' plan, and it didn't exactly work.