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Allen Dulles (1893–1969)

Allen Dulles (1893–1969)

Allen Welsh Dulles was an American diplomat, lawyer, banker, and public official who was the longest-serving director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (1953–1961). He was also a member of the Warren Commission (the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy), established in 1963. As a young diplomat, beginning in 1916, Dulles was posted in various European countries, where he was involved in gathering intelligence information. Periodically during the late 1920s and early 1930s, he served as legal adviser to the delegation on arms limitation at the League of Nations. During the Second World War, Dulles was transferred to Bern, Switzerland, where he worked on intelligence regarding German plans and activities. During this period, he worked closely with Royall Tyler (using the code name Mr. Roberts and the number 477), who served as Dulles’s go-between, drawing on his high-level connections in the European financial community and establishing contacts with Dulles’s friend, Prince Maximilian Egon von Hohenlohe-Langenburg (1897–1968), and the Prince’s chaperone, the Austrian SS officer Reinhard N. Spitzy (1912–2010). In 1945, Dulles played a central role in Operation Sunrise, the secret negotiations leading to the unconditional capitulation of German troops in Italy.

 

Allen Welsh Dulles and Neal H. Petersen, From Hitler’s Doorstep: The Wartime Intelligence Reports of Allen Dulles, 1942–1945 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996).

James Srodes, Allen Dulles, Master of Spies (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 1999).