The American intelligence official who institutionalized covert war
In 1945, negotiations for the surrender of northern Italy hastened the war's end while excluding the Soviet representative and Italian partisans.
Allen Dulles was an American diplomat, lawyer, and intelligence chief who linked wartime secret negotiations to the covert interventions of the Cold War. As head of the OSS station in Bern, he advanced Operation Sunrise, the negotiation of the German surrender in northern Italy, while its exclusion of the Soviet ally and implications for Italian partisan power exposed the tensions within the Allied coalition. He later led the CIA through coups in Iran and Guatemala and the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, expanding both the reach of the American intelligence state and the questions of responsibility attached to it. His resignation after Cuba did not end his influence, which remains emblematic of the union of intelligence gathering and imperial intervention.
Career Timeline
- 1916–1926U.S. State Department diplomat in Europe and the Near East
- 1927–1944Legal adviser on diplomacy and arms limitation; Council on Foreign Relations secretary and president
- 1942–1945Chief of the OSS station in Bern; led the Operation Sunrise negotiations
- 1945Chief of the OSS station in Berlin
- 1951–1953CIA Deputy Director for Plans and Deputy Director of Central Intelligence
- 1953–1961Director of Central Intelligence
- 1963–1964Member of the Warren Commission investigating the Kennedy assassination