Author: Stephen Kinzer Publisher: Macmillan ISBN: 1429953527 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 416
Book Description
A joint biography of John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, who led the United States into an unseen war that decisively shaped today's world During the 1950s, when the Cold War was at its peak, two immensely powerful brothers led the United States into a series of foreign adventures whose effects are still shaking the world. John Foster Dulles was secretary of state while his brother, Allen Dulles, was director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In this book, Stephen Kinzer places their extraordinary lives against the background of American culture and history. He uses the framework of biography to ask: Why does the United States behave as it does in the world? The Brothers explores hidden forces that shape the national psyche, from religious piety to Western movies—many of which are about a noble gunman who cleans up a lawless town by killing bad guys. This is how the Dulles brothers saw themselves, and how many Americans still see their country's role in the world. Propelled by a quintessentially American set of fears and delusions, the Dulles brothers launched violent campaigns against foreign leaders they saw as threats to the United States. These campaigns helped push countries from Guatemala to the Congo into long spirals of violence, led the United States into the Vietnam War, and laid the foundation for decades of hostility between the United States and countries from Cuba to Iran. The story of the Dulles brothers is the story of America. It illuminates and helps explain the modern history of the United States and the world. A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2013
Author: David Talbot Publisher: HarperCollins ISBN: 0062276212 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 455
Book Description
An explosive, headline-making portrait of Allen Dulles, the man who transformed the CIA into the most powerful—and secretive—colossus in Washington, from the founder of Salon.com and author of the New York Times bestseller Brothers. America’s greatest untold story: the United States’ rise to world dominance under the guile of Allen Welsh Dulles, the longest-serving director of the CIA. Drawing on revelatory new materials—including newly discovered U.S. government documents, U.S. and European intelligence sources, the personal correspondence and journals of Allen Dulles’s wife and mistress, and exclusive interviews with the children of prominent CIA officials—Talbot reveals the underside of one of America’s most powerful and influential figures. Dulles’s decade as the director of the CIA—which he used to further his public and private agendas—were dark times in American politics. Calling himself “the secretary of state of unfriendly countries,” Dulles saw himself as above the elected law, 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—colluding with Nazi-controlled cartels, German war criminals, and Mafiosi in the process. Targeting foreign leaders for assassination and overthrowing nationalist governments not in line with his political aims, Dulles employed those same tactics to further his goals at home, Talbot charges, offering shocking new evidence in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. An exposé of American power that is as disturbing as it is timely, The Devil’s Chessboard is a provocative and gripping story of the rise of the national security state—and the battle for America’s soul.
Author: Peter Grose Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Press ISBN: 9781558490444 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 578
Book Description
"Grose has produced what must be the most comprehensive account to date of the CIA's deeds and misdeeds during the cold-war years. It makes an absorbing story". -- (London) Sunday Times
Author: Greg Poulgrain Publisher: Skyhorse ISBN: 9781510744790 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
For those interested in the assassination of JFK, the untold story of Indonesia, gold, JFK, Allen Dulles, the CIA, and secret military coups. Two of the most fascinating figures in history, John F. Kennedy, thirty-fifth president of the United States, and Allen Dulles, our nation’s longest-serving CIA director, often clashed over intelligence issues and national security. However, one such conflict has remained in the shadows until now. JFK vs. Allen Dulles: Battleground Indonesia takes reader to the vast archipelago 3350 miles wide where this secret showdown occurred. In 1936, an Allen Dulles-established company discovered the world's largest gold deposit in remote Netherlands New Guinea. In 1962, President Kennedy intervened, and Netherlands New Guinea was added to President Sukarno's Indonesia. Neither Sukarno nor JFK was aware of the gold, since Dulles had not informed Kennedy. Dulles planned a complicated and ruthless CIA regime-change strategy to seize control not only of Indonesia itself, but also of its vast resources, including the gold. This strategy included a push to start Malaysian Confrontation. Yet Kennedy's plan to visit Jakarta in early 1964 would have sunk Dulles' master plan, which included the destruction of the Indonesian communist party as a wedge to split Moscow and Beijing. Only an assassin's bullet put an end to Kennedy’s plan of peace. Did Allen Dulles arrange for JFK to be killed to save his plan and his gold? Was his coup for gold successful with JFK out of the picture? Using archival records as a basis, Greg Poulgrain adds word-of-mouth evidence from those people who were directly involved—such as Dean Rusk and others who worked with President Kennedy and Allen Dulles at the time; or the person who was with Michael Rockefeller when he mysteriously disappeared in West New Guinea during this whole affair.
Author: Kerstin von Lingen Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1107025931 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 339
Book Description
Kerstin von Lingen shows how Nazi SS-General Karl Wolff avoided war crimes prosecution because of his role in "Operation Sunrise," negotiations conducted by high-ranking American, Swiss, and British officials - in violation of the Casablanca agreements with the Soviet Union - for the surrender of German forces in Italy. Von Lingen suggests that the Cold War started already with "Operation Sunrise," and helps us understand rollback operations thereafter: one was the failure of justice and selective prosecution for high ranking Nazi criminals. The Western Allies not only failed to ensure cooperation between their respective national war crimes prosecution organizations, but in certain cases even obstructed justice by withholding evidence from the prosecution.
Author: Allen Dulles Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 1599215772 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 304
Book Description
If the experts could point to any single book as a starting point for understanding the subject of intelligence from the late twentieth century to today, that single book would be Allen W. Dulles's The Craft of Intelligence. This classic of spycraft is based on Allen Dulles's incomparable experience as a diplomat, international lawyer, and America's premier intelligence officer. Dulles was a high-ranking officer of the CIA's predecessor--the Office of Strategic Services--and was present at the inception of the CIA, where he served eight of his ten years there as director. Here he sums up what he learned about intelligence from nearly a half-century of experience in foreign affairs. In World War II his OSS agents penetrated the German Foreign Office, worked with the anti-Nazi underground resistance, and established contacts that brought about the Nazi military surrender in North Italy. Under his direction the CIA developed both a dedicated corps of specialists and a whole range of new intelligence devices, from the U-2 high-altitude photographic plane to minute electronic listening and transmitting equipment. Dulles reveals much about how intelligence is collected and processed, and how the resulting estimates contribute to the formation of national policy. He discusses methods of surveillance, and the usefulness of defectors from hostile nations. His knowledge of Soviet espionage techniques is unrivaled, and he explains how the Soviet State Security Service recruited operatives and planted "illegals" in foreign countries. He spells out not only the techniques of modern espionage but also the philosophy and role of intelligence in a free society threatened by global conspiracies. Dulles also addresses the Bay of Pigs incident, denying that the 1961 invasion was based on a CIA estimate that a popular Cuban uprising would ensue. This account is enlivened with a wealth of personal anecdotes. It is a book for readers who seek wider understanding of the contribution of intelligence to our national security.
Author: Peter Grose Publisher: Andr Deutsch ISBN: Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 676
Book Description
International intrigue, varied love affairs, and clandestine operations to topple governments all marked the life of Allen Dulles (1893-1969) who is regarded as the keystone figure in the history of American intelligence. Dulles was appointed as the first civilian director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1953 (previous directors had been military officers) and was a member of the Warren Commission which investigated the assassination of President Kennedy. This definitive biography goes beyond the life of this one fascinating man, and documents the creation of a massive intelligence network and the development of the United States into a super power. Dulles' influence on intelligence gathering and covert activities still resonates today.
Author: Tony Sharp Publisher: Hurst & Company Limited ISBN: 1849043442 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 425
Book Description
Stalin's American Spy tells the remarkable story of Noel Field, a Soviet agent in the US State Department in the mid-1930s. Lured to Prague in May 1949, he was kidnapped and handed over to the Hungarian secret police. Tortured by them and interrogated too by their Soviet superiors, Field's forced 'confessions' were manipulated by Stalin and his East European satraps to launch a devastating series of show-trials that led to the imprisonment and judicial murder of numerous Czechoslovak, German, Polish and Hungarian party members. Yet there were other events in his very strange career that could give rise to the suspicion that Field was an American spy who had infiltrated the Communist movement at the behest of Allen Dulles, the wartime OSS chief in Switzerland who later headed the CIA. Never tried, Field and his wife were imprisoned in Budapest until 1954, then granted political asylum in Hungary, where they lived out their sterile last years. This new biography takes a fresh look at Field's relationship with Dulles, and his role in the Alger Hiss affair. It sheds fresh light upon Soviet espionage in the United States and Field's relationship with Hede Massing, Ignace Reiss and Walter Krivitsky. It also reassesses how the increasingly anti-Semitic East European show-trials were staged and dissects the 'lessons which Stalin sought to convey through them.
Author: Stephen Kinzer
Author: David Talbot
Author: Peter Grose
Author: Leonard Mosley
Author: Greg Poulgrain
Author: Kerstin von Lingen
Author: Allen Dulles
Author: James Srodes
Author: Peter Grose
Author: Tony Sharp