Allen Dulles

Allen Welch Dulles (1893-1969) was a U.S. intelligence official who started in the Office of Strategic Services, was an active participant in the transformation that produced the Central Intelligence Agency, and then a long-term Director of Central Intelligence. In many respects, as a coauthor of documents such as the Dulles-Jackson-Correa report, he defined his own job. During the 1950s, his influence was enhanced by having his brother, John Foster Dulles, as U.S. Secretary of State.

He guided the CIA, and in principle the U.S. intelligence community, through much of the fifties and early sixties. After the Bay of Pigs in 1961, President John F. Kennedy exercised greater supervision, although the agency stepped up its activity in Southeast Asia under Lyndon B. Johnson, replacing Dulles, an OSS veteran, with a Republican with a general engineering background. Dulles' autobiography, is more noteworthy as a way of understanding the mindset of key people in the field than it is a detailed description of the CIA.