Description
An explosive, headline-making portrait of Allen Dulles, the person who remodeled the CIA into probably the most tough—and secretive—colossus in Washington, from the founding father of Salon.com and writer of the New York Times bestseller Brothers.
America’s largest untold tale: america’ upward thrust to global dominance beneath the guile of Allen Welsh Dulles, the longest-serving director of the CIA. Drawing on revelatory new fabrics—together with newly came upon U.S. govt files, U.S. and Eu intelligence resources, the non-public correspondence and journals of Allen Dulles’s spouse and mistress, and unique interviews with the youngsters of outstanding CIA officers—Talbot unearths the bottom of certainly one of The usa’s such a lot tough and influential figures.
Dulles’s decade because the director of the CIA—which he used to additional his private and non-private agendas—have been darkish instances in American politics. Calling himself “the secretary of state of unfriendly international locations,” Dulles noticed himself as above the elected regulation, manipulating and subverting American presidents within the pursuit of his private pursuits and the ones of the wealthy elite he counted as his buddies and shoppers—colluding with Nazi-managed cartels, German Warfare criminals, and Mafiosi within the procedure. Concentrated on overseas leaders for assassination and overthrowing nationalist governments no longer in keeping with his political objectives, Dulles hired those self same techniques to additional his targets at house, Talbot fees, providing stunning new proof within the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
An exposé of American energy that may be as tense as it’s well timed, The Satan’s Chessboard is a provocative and gripping tale of the upward thrust of the nationwide safety state—and the combat for The usa’s soul.
An Amazon Highest E-book of October 2015: Salon.com co-founder David Talbot’s The Satan’s Chessboard paints a riveting however unflattering image of longtime CIA leader Allen Dulles (and of his Secretary of State brother, John Foster Dulles) in a nonfiction account masking a long time of espionage, questionable techniques, and outright conspiracy. Heaping element after element right into a dense however speedy-flowing account, Talbot has written a E-book that reads like phase Chilly Warfare historical past and phase Tom Clancy novel. Each brothers safe the wealthy and robust. Each felt they might act out of doors the principles. Each feared the Soviets and could do apparently anything else to oppose them. Readers can be happy those males are long gone, at the same time as they drink up each and every phrase written approximately them. And a few will ponder whether others have quietly taken their position.–Chris Schluep
