THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 19, 1995 TAG: 9503140267
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY BARRETT R. RICHARDSON
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
GENTLEMAN SPY
The Life of Allen Dulles
PETER GROSE
Houghton Mifflin Co. 641 pp. $30.
IN HIS BIOGRAPHY of spymaster Allen Dulles, Gentleman Spy, Peter Grose relates a fascinating history of modern espionage. His nonfiction narrative rivals many spy novels in complexity of international intrigue. Would that the book were as fast-paced as a fictional thriller.
Grose, a former diplomatic correspondent for The New York Times and editor of Foreign Affairs, journeys through Dulles' career at a leisurely pace, being thorough but not always engaging. He devotes the book's first half to Dulles' life before he became the Central Intelligence Agency's director in 1951. Although these times were colored by cloak-and-dagger doings, Dulles' later life is much more compelling.
As the grandson of a secretary of state under President Benjamin Harrison and the brother of Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles (1893-1969) was in a unique position to influence presidents and Congress and affect foreign policy. He came from a privileged background that led from Princeton into the diplomatic service and, for a while, to a prestigious Wall Street law firm where his older brother overshadowed him.
During World War I, Dulles was a minor player in the U.S. foreign service. But while serving as a journeyman diplomat, based in Switzerland, he became familiar with the problems of gathering intelligence. Dulles returned to Switzerland during World War II to work for the Office of Strategic Services, the military intelligence agency that evolved into the CIA, and built an intricate spy network in Berne. He also conducted clandestine affairs of another nature, having extramarital liaisons with American aristocrat Mary Bancroft and Wally Toscanini Castelbarco, a passionate Italian countess and daughter of the famous conductor.
Dulles led a storybook life during wartime when other men were encountering real danger on the battlefield. His job was primarily to gather and analyze information. Little did he know at the time that an obscure young lieutenant named William J. Casey was stirring up OSS Director ``Wild Bill'' Donovan's interest in more direct action.
This emphasis came to full flower during Dulles' CIA directorship when covert actions and ``monkey business'' made the agency a lightning rod for public criticism at home and a target of propaganda abroad. Some ``highlights'' of this time and Dulles' tenure:
Spurred by a fear that the Soviet Union intended to expand its Communist empire, the United States officially sanctioned covert action in a National Security Council directive dated June 18, 1948. Known as NSC 10/2, it gave the government's blessing to a broad range of ``propaganda, economic warfare, preventive direct action including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversions against hostile states including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups.''
CIA ``Operation Ajax'' in 1953 aimed to depose populist revolutionary Mohammad Mossadegh as prime minister of Iran and consolidate the power of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as head of the oil-rich state that bordered the Soviet Union, but it had the appearance of a comic opera at the time. Nobody laughed when the Shah was later overthrown and replaced by an Islamic state, however.
The United States designed U-2 spy aircraft to conduct high-altitude surveillance over the Soviet Union, but suffered considerable embarrassment when the Russians shot down U-2 pilot Gary Powers in 1960.
Grose extensively documents CIA involvement in the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion and explores Dulles' participation on the Warren Commission. In light of allegations that the CIA was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy, Dulles was cast in the awkward role of ``simultaneously investigating and guarding government secrets,'' Grose writes.
Gentleman Spy is a compelling story about a remarkable and personable man who found spycraft fun. Dulles' motives may have been patriotic, but his legacy of methods and results will be questioned for a long time to come as more and more layers of CIA activity are uncovered. Grose's book is a history of our times recorded through a peephole. MEMO: Barrett R. Richardson is a retired staff editor who teaches English
part time at Tidewater Community College. ILLUSTRATION: Photo of book cover
by CNB