Allen Dulles: The Life of the CIA’s Most Powerful and Notorious Director

Though it might be hard to believe today, the Americans did not have a covert operations organization when they joined World War II, and like the British, it took them some time to realize it could be a powerful tool. As a result, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was not established until June 13, 1942, six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Voices within the Pentagon, State Department, and White House all opposed the establishment of this new and untested organization that would carry out activities normally considered unacceptable, so officials within the OSS had to fight for the very existence of the organization, battling through layers of bureaucracy to get the resources he needed and ensure its independence of action. They also worked hard to justify the use of covert tactics in warfare, to the extent that its leader, William “Wild Bill” Donovan, cited precedents that stretched back to the Bible.

The 28-year period from 1933-1961, bracketed on one end by Hitler’s rise to power in Germany and on the other by the very height of the Cold War, was marked by a remarkably stable succession of American presidents. In fact, only three men held office in this period, and that predictability led to a general stability among government agencies. Conversely, the CIA had five different directors in its first 15 years, from 1946-1961, and then nine different directors in the next 20, with four of those directors serving less than a year. But of all the CIA’s directors, none wielded the immense influence or power of Allen Dulles, who, together with his brother, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, became arguably the two most powerful people in the government after the president.

A confluence of events made it all possible. After World War II brought the beginning of the Cold War, the Marshall Plan that aimed to rebuild and stabilize Europe benefitted the newly formed CIA because of the large amounts of money being distributed. The agency was able to place sympathetic Soviet expert George Kennan on the plan’s board and Allen Dulles as an advisor. Thanks to the efforts of these men, the CIA gained the ability to skim hundreds of millions from the tens of billions of dollars earmarked for Europe and Asia, providing a virtually unlimited pile of untraceable money for clandestine operations, which would subsequently be limited only by imagination. The CIA also finally had the support of the Defense Department. In 1948, Secretary of Defense James Forrestal authorized the CIA to conduct guerrilla movements, fund underground armies, and engage in sabotage and assassination in the name of American ideology. The groundwork was now firmly laid for the CIA to move into the extralegal, morally ambiguous territory that would come to define it, right as Dulles was about to muscle his way into the position of Director of Central Intelligence.

To this day, Dulles’ eight-year tenure in that office is the longest, and as one of the country’s leading experts in international law, intelligence, and spycraft, he became renowned for his unwavering anti-communist ideology and readiness to take decisive measures to counter what he perceived as a menace to American safety. As such, it would be Dulles who sanctioned many of the CIA’s most notorious operations, including the ousting of Iran's democratically elected government in 1953, spying and experimentation on American citizens, and the disastrous Bay of Pigs. That last episode cost him his job, though he continued to play a role in American political life after President John F. Kennedy forced him out of the CIA in 1961.

By then, however, Dulles had already had an outsized influence on the direction of the country, and to this day his legacy can be felt, even as his reputation continues to be a source of much debate.