The Devil's Chessboard - Allen Dulles

Being nagged by the library to bring back this overdue book.  Finished reading it days ago, but taking days as well to process it and figure out what I want to blog about it.

Let's go back to the mid-60s and career aptitude tests in high school.  The counselor is shocked and unprepared because I am the only one whose suggested career comes out as "spy."  This does not seem unusual to me; it seems natural and something I want to do and excel at, notwithstanding the first couple of 007 movies.  I have an essence inside me that longs to serve my country, preserve it, defend it without being in the military.  Naively, I assumed there would be borderline actions as I spy I would have to take, but the end goal seemed to justify them.

Of course, at that time Allen Dulles was securely ensconced in the CIA.  Although the book details all the Skull and Bones Yalies who got almost automatically recruited, the book does not mention hiring female undercover agents.

I remember more news stories about his brother John Foster than anything untoward about Allen Dulles ... just goes to show you how perfect his reign and control were.  The book traces his career from the inauguration of the CIA under Truman through LBJ's presidency.  David Talbot goes back to the beginning and lays over 400 pages of foundation to lead up to the second half of the book which is another reprise of the JFK assassination.  All that goes before does make a conspiracy seem more plausible than other attempts.

I am left with two problems I still cannot settle in my mind.  Dulles comes off as worse than Machiavelli, worse than Rasputin, worse than Cardinal Richelieu, and one is left feeling that there are not enough circles in hell to place him.  Yet where does patriotism and defense of country against nations determined to end democracy become evil.  Dulles saw the danger of Communism but did not see its failures to keep an internal economy going.  He seemed to fight institutions and theories with his powerful intellect and ability to align allies and pull together multiple self-serving motives.  I cannot fathom how he could cope with the rise of religious fanaticism and lone assassins.

The second gnawing problem I have with the book is my well developed skepticism that all political writings advocate one extreme position or another.  A quarter of a century working for the budget office ingrained in me a sense of "neutral competence" writing, one that articulates the pros and cons, makes a recommendation, but has sufficient thought behind it to comfortably entertain a change in policy.  As a "historical" biography, I got skeptical about David Talbot's ultimate neutrality.

Here are several quotes from the Devil's Chessboard that struck me and made me rethink my spy above all else mindset:

From the prologue:  "Our country's cheerleaders (don't like this word) are wedded to the notion of American exceptionalsim.  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."

Describing Dulles' relationship with his wife:  "But many years later, Clover (his wife) would write a more honest assessment of her husband in a diary that she left for her children.  By then, she felt no obligation to window-dress their marriage.  '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 ... I took me along time to realize that when he talks it is only for the purpose of obtaining something ... He has either 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 because the parson isn't worth talking to."

"Dedicated to the dark necessities of expanding American power, the security complex began to take on a hidden life of its own, untethered from the checks and balances of democracy.  Sometimes CIA officials kept the White House and Congress informed; often they did not.  When ... NBC News asked Dulles if the CIA med its own policy, the spymaster insisted that during his tenure he had regularly briefed congressional committees about the agency's budget and operations.  But, he added. Congress generally preferred to remain blissfully ignorant of the distasteful things down in the government's name."

This was a book to read before a presidential election ... who has the talents to hold our own, vis a vis the world and our citizens and governmental agents.