An intelligence service is the ideal vehicle for a conspiracy.

Allen Dulles and his older brother John Foster Dulles grew up as sons of a Presbyterian minister in Watertown NY. As a child he had to attend church almost every day. This is evidence that not all training takes effect. His family had deep roots in government services with several Secretaries of State in their heritage.

Having gone to Princeton, in 1916 he joined the foreign service, serving in Vienna, Paris and Istanbul among other places. Ten years later he received a law degree from George Washington University and joined John at the powerful and prestigious New York law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell. The firm represented several large German firms with travels taking him to meet people whose names would soon be on everyone's lips like, Hitler and Mussolini along with various British leaders. At the time, he wrote to his brother telling him that he admired these people so things were not as bad as people had heard and that concerns about conflict were overblown.

As the world saw the beginnings of the European conflict and the US was divided between interventionist and non-interventionist thinking, Dulles came down firmly on the interventions side helping to write two books urging involvement in the European fighting.

At the war's outbreak he joined the Office of Strategic Services and lived in Bern Switzerland gathering and transmitting information about the German movements and capabilities, while working with and advising some of the law firm's German clients. On his arrival in Switzerland he renewed an old friendship with Thomas McKittrick from the Bank for International Settlements. This bank had been established to handle restitution claims from the German government following World War I. However currently it was utilized by the Nazis to facilitate the movement of confiscated gold from Jews and conquered nations into a safe place.

Dulles frequently entertained German dignitaries as they passed through his are keeping an eye on their assets and gathering information. Toward the end of the conflict he made private agreements with some Nazis, helping them escape the country along with their assets. Dulles had little problems dealing with the Nazi leaders, the generals, industrialists, scientists as he respected them and their personal achievements

His efforts to help some avoid the full consequences, including the allied gallows, of what they had done to the world were some of the prime drivers, along with beginning negotiations with the Nazis before the end of the war, of Soviet mistrust of the United States and fueled the beginnings of the cold war. He was a supporter of Operation Paperclip that brought numerous Nazis into our government and technological/industrial leadership.

When he became the first civilian director of the Central Intelligence Agency during the beginnings of the cold war (which had a hand in creating). There was great concern that the new enemies had figured out some sort of mind control techniques. He was more than happy to bring in Nazis who had experience in getting information out of unwilling subjects and guiding them into desired actions.

We had just fought a bloody war to stop the evil inflicted on the people of Germany and conquered regions and he invited some of the perpetrators into our home to learn from their experiences. This is the thinking that led to excesses like MKULTRA.

Not content to merely work defensively to protect the United States Dulles, was eager to use the new found status of the United States as a super power and believed he was morally justified to do what he felt was necessary to prevent unfriendly regimes from coming to power. At times, he believed it necessary to actually remove those that already existed. Operation Gladio illustrated his view of justified manipulation of the leadership of a sovereign nation of Italy. Beyond this he oversaw the regime change in Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954.

This was pretty much the theme of his whole time at the CIA... including the assassination of the Diem brothers in Vietnam... against the orders President Kennedy. However the military involvement in the Bay of Pigs invasion led to the final break with the president and his firing by the man who declared he would be breaking up his organization a thousand pieces. Dulles failed to realize that Kennedy was already dealing with Castro through back channels when the doomed invasion took place. Neither did he realize that the agreement not to attack Cuba was part of the missile crisis deal. That is why US air support was denied and many Cuban patriots were either killed or captured.

In giving Allen Dulles the boot, Kennedy won that battle, but set up his ultimate downfall. Dulles lost his position, but not his influence. Along with Dulles, his second in command, Charles Cabell (brother of Dallas Mayor Earle Cabell) was given his walking papers. To insure the public would not be any the wiser about the events on November 22, 1963, President Lyndon Johnson appointed Allen Dulles the Warren Commission to guide the committee down the “Oswald was the lone crazy gunman” path – and he succeeded.

Dulles's daughter Joan is quoted as saying, “Once you go to the dark side there seems to be no limit.”

Jefferson Morley added, "Like Angleton, Dulles preferred collaborating with fascists to enabling Communists."

The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government by David Talbott

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.


The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War by Stephen Kinzer

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.