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10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Allen Dulles.md
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@ -28,6 +28,11 @@ relations:
start: 1949
role: "vice-chairman"
fn: 2
- type: member_of
with: "[[Warren Commission]]"
start: 1963-11-29
end: 1964-09-24
fn: 11
---
Allen Welsh Dulles (April 7, 1893 - January 29, 1969) served as [[Director of Central Intelligence]] from February 26, 1953, to November 29, 1961 - the longest tenure of any DCI, the first civilian DCI, and the only brother of a sitting Secretary of State to hold the position. Dulles built the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] into the instrument of Cold War covert action that executed [[Operation AJAX]] in [[Iran]] (1953), [[Operation PBSUCCESS]] in [[Guatemala]] (1954), and the [[Bay of Pigs]] invasion of [[Cuba]] (1961). The Bay of Pigs disaster cost him his position - President [[John F. Kennedy]] forced his resignation, along with [[Richard Bissell]] and [[Charles P. Cabell|C.P. Cabell]] - and his subsequent appointment by President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] to the [[Warren Commission]] investigating Kennedy's assassination placed him in the remarkable position of overseeing the investigation of the event that had ended both his patron's life and his own career.[^1]
@ -77,17 +82,19 @@ The Bay of Pigs invasion of April 17-19, 1961 was the catastrophic failure that
Kennedy publicly accepted responsibility but was privately furious. He reportedly told aide [[Ted Sorensen]] that he wanted to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds" - a remark almost certainly apocryphal in its precise wording but consistent with his documented anger. The Taylor Commission's findings and the classified Kirkpatrick IG report both pointed to fundamental CIA failures in planning, execution, and judgment.
Dulles submitted his resignation in September 1961; it was formally accepted November 29, 1961. He was replaced by [[John McCone]]. Bissell and Cabell were also forced out. CIA veterans viewed their dismissal as Kennedy scapegoating the agency for a failure the [[White House]] had co-created by canceling the air strikes.[^1]
Dulles submitted his resignation in September 1961; it was formally accepted November 29, 1961. He was replaced by [[John McCone]]. The CIA's own history states that a "humiliated President Kennedy did not wait for either report before cleaning house at CIA" and that he accepted resignations from Dulles and from Deputy Director for Plans Richard Bissell, who stayed at their posts until their successors were selected a few months later.[^10] Bissell and Cabell were also forced out. CIA veterans viewed their dismissal as Kennedy scapegoating the agency for a failure the [[White House]] had co-created by canceling the air strikes.[^1]
### The Warren Commission
On November 29, 1963 - exactly two years after Dulles's forced resignation - President Lyndon Johnson appointed the Warren Commission to investigate Kennedy's assassination. Among the seven commissioners Johnson named was Allen Dulles despite Kennedy’s firing of Dulles.
On November 29, 1963 - exactly two years after Dulles's forced resignation - President Lyndon Johnson appointed the Warren Commission to investigate Kennedy's assassination. Among the seven commissioners Johnson named was Allen Dulles despite Kennedy’s firing of Dulles.[^11]
The investigation was examining whether CIA-connected parties (specifically the anti-Castro exile networks and organized crime figures that Dulles had directly overseen) had any role in the assassination. He was now in a position to shape what evidence the Commission sought, what witnesses it called, and what conclusions it reached regarding the CIA programs he had run.
Dulles was reportedly among the most active commissioners in shaping the investigation's scope. He briefed commissioners on CIA history and procedures. He did not disclose the [[ZR/RIFLE]] assassination plotting program - which [[Richard Helms]] as DDP was simultaneously concealing from the Commission at the agency level. The CIA's failure to disclose the assassination plots to the Warren Commission, documented by the Church Committee in 1975, was the institutional decision; Dulles's personal role in that decision - as both a commissioner and the former DCI who had authorized the programs - was the structural conflict of interest the Commission's composition created.
Dulles was reportedly among the most active commissioners in shaping the investigation's scope. He briefed commissioners on CIA history and procedures. Book V of the Church Committee's final report states that, with the exception of Dulles, it is unlikely anyone on the Warren Commission knew of the CIA's assassination efforts, and that Dulles knew of the plots with underworld figures that had taken place during his tenure as Director of Central Intelligence.[^12] The Church Committee's 1975 interim report states that Dulles "did not inform the other members about the plots that had occurred during his term as DCI,"[^13] and also states that "it is not entirely certain that Dulles was ever made aware of the true nature of the underworld operation."[^14] The [[ZR/RIFLE]] assassination plotting program was, in the same period, not disclosed to the Commission at the agency level by [[Richard Helms]] as Deputy Director for Plans. Helms testified that Dulles "was sitting right there" in the Commission's deliberations and "knew about this," and that he did not know what Dulles had said to the Commission about the plots.[^15] The CIA's failure to disclose the assassination plots to the Warren Commission was documented by the Church Committee in 1975; Dulles's role as both a commissioner and the former DCI who had authorized the programs is the structural conflict of interest the Commission's composition created.
The [[HSCA|House Select Committee on Assassinations]] (1979) found that the Warren Commission had not been fully informed of CIA activities relevant to the investigation. The precise mechanism by which this occurred - institutional CIA decision, active concealment by Dulles, or some combination - was not definitively established.[^7]
Angleton testified that Dulles consulted him before agreeing to President Johnson's request that he serve, that the two were in frequent contact, and that they informally discussed the progress of the investigation and what further work the CIA could do.[^16] At the January 22, 1964 executive session, the Commission took up a report that [[Lee Harvey Oswald]] had been a paid FBI informant. Dulles asked whether the purpose of such a hire could have been to penetrate the [[Fair Play for Cuba Committee]]. He said that practically any American could obtain a passport good for anywhere, and that the Passport Bureau had no record of Oswald's defection. Near the end of the meeting, Dulles said: "I think this record ought to be destroyed."[^17] FBI Director [[J. Edgar Hoover]]'s files held an index card on Dulles that cross-referenced a November 29, 1963 memorandum.[^18]
The [[HSCA|House Select Committee on Assassinations]] (1979) found that the Warren Commission's failure to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy was "attributable in part to the failure of the Commission to receive all the relevant information that was in the possession of other agencies and departments of the Government," and that the CIA "was deficient in its collection and sharing of information both prior to and subsequent to the assassination."[^19] The report does not name Dulles in those findings. It states that the committee did not ignore the possibility that certain CIA officials who knew that close scrutiny of United States-Cuban relations could have exposed the CIA-Mafia plots might have tried to keep the CIA's or the Warren Commission's inquiry from the question of Cuban complicity, and that it determined that only Deputy Director Helms was in a position to have both the knowledge and the power to accomplish such a cover-up and was satisfied, on the basis of its investigation, that it was "highly unlikely he in fact did so."[^20] It found that the details of the AMLASH plot and the CIA-Mafia plots should have been provided to the Warren Commission.[^21]
### Death and Legacy
@ -104,3 +111,15 @@ Dulles spent his post-CIA years writing, lecturing, and defending the covert act
[^7]: Kornbluh, Peter, ed. *Bay of Pigs Declassified: The Secret CIA Report on the Invasion of Cuba.* New Press, 1998. Church Committee. "Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders." Senate Report No. 94-465, 1975. Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy.* Random House, 1991. Chapter 4.
[^8]: John D. Marks, *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate*. Times Books, 1979, Chapter 4; "Project MKULTRA, the CIA's Program of Research in Behavioral Modification," Joint Senate Hearing, August 3, 1977.
[^9]: Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett, *Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon*. HarperCollins, 1995, Ch. 18; John D. Marks, *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate*. Times Books, 1979, Chapter 9.
[^10]: Warner, Michael, "The CIA's Internal Probe of the Bay of Pigs Affair: Lessons Unlearned," *Studies in Intelligence*, Winter 1998-1999. https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/Internal-Probe-Bay-Pigs.pdf
[^11]: Executive Order 11130, "Appointing a Commission To Report Upon the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy," November 29, 1963. The American Presidency Project. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-11130-appointing-commission-report-upon-the-assassination-president-john-f
[^12]: U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, *The Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: Performance of the Intelligence Agencies*, Book V, Final Report, April 23, 1976, pp. 67-68. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_V.pdf
[^13]: U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, *Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders: An Interim Report*, Senate Report No. 94-465, 1975, p. 269, note 1. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^14]: *Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders*, p. 267. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^15]: Book V, p. 70 (Helms testimony of July 18, 1975). https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_V.pdf
[^16]: Book V, p. 69 (note 134, Angleton testimony of February 6, 1976, pp. 31-34). https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_V.pdf
[^17]: Warren Commission, executive session transcript, January 22, 1964, 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. https://aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcexec/pdf/WcEx0122.pdf
[^18]: U.S. Assassination Records Review Board, memorandum by Ronald G. Haron, "Assassination Records Among the Files of J. Edgar Hoover (FBI-36)," January 8, 1998. https://documents3.theblackvault.com/documents/jfkfiles/NARA-Oct2017/ARRB/RHARON/HARON/FBIMEM.002.pdf
[^19]: House Select Committee on Assassinations, *Report,* H. Rept. 95-1828, 95th Cong., 2d sess. (1979), summary Findings I.D.4 and I.D.5(b) (p. 4). https://archive.org/details/reportofselectco1979unit
[^20]: House Select Committee on Assassinations, *Report,* H. Rept. 95-1828, p. 128. https://archive.org/details/reportofselectco1979unit
[^21]: House Select Committee on Assassinations, *Report,* H. Rept. 95-1828, pp. 112-116. https://archive.org/details/reportofselectco1979unit