His ideological obsession in countering the Soviet Union in the Cold War knew no bounds. Talbot reports that private citizen Dulles funded espionage activities with treasure looted from Jewish families; that he set up, together with Frank Wisner and others, his own espionage unit deep within the State Department – the Office of Policy Coordination; that he was instrumental in the rise of Richard Nixon to political prominence. Throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s he was hard at work constructing the infrastructure of the CIA and a powerful secret government that would outlast him.Unfortunately Curtin emphasizes Dulles's antisemitism in the first half of this review and in the last half provides a rather narrow focus on the machinations and well-grounded suspicions of Dulles that Talbot revealed in his book. Missing from Curtin's review is a larger picture of how Dulles represented dark fascist forces in the US which, having failed with a government coup in 1933 (read Jules Archer's The Plot to Seize the White House), buried themselves under the label of isolationism to impede any efforts by the Roosevelt administration to counter the growing forces of fascist capitalism that overran Europe.
Once he finagled his way into the position of CIA Director under Eisenhower, “the CIA would become avast kingdom, the most powerful and least supervised agency in government …. More in keeping with an expanding empire than with a vibrant democracy.”
After WWII they then used the naive President Truman, whose main claim to success was as an operator of a department store in Missouri, to ensconce themselves in a new secret organization that soon became the CIA. This is where Talbot's exposé comes in to tell the story of the gradual takeover of our government by these authoritarian capitalists, while Curtin in this review fails to provide the more important larger history by focusing on "evil-doers" such as Dulles. This constrained focus is necessary in order to avoid issues of fascism and the fake democracy-themed distractions we now see played out over our TV sets.
Perhaps I'm being a bit unfair. So, read the review and the book to see what you think. Also, check out this recent post regarding the book, its author, and my commentary.
