Allen Dulles was the long-serving CIA director, in office until January 1961, whom John Kiriakou calls a “monster.”[1] A board member of the United Fruit Company, Dulles ran the CIA that overthrew Guatemala’s Árbenz, and his bust once greeted visitors at CIA headquarters.[2] By the time Kiriakou joined, Dulles was “kind of forgotten,” his era of “kicking asses and taking names” from 1952 to 1960 long past. But Kiriakou distinguishes Dulles from counterintelligence chief James Angleton: Dulles “knew he had been doing some filthy stuff,” reportedly saying on his deathbed he would “see my boys back in hell.”[3][4]
Kiriakou confirms the account that Dulles went to former President Truman’s home to try to talk him out of pursuing his public complaints against the CIA — made in a Washington Post op-ed shortly after the Kennedy assassination that the agency demanded be pulled from the paper’s afternoon edition — calling Dulles “a very dark figure in American history” and noting both Dulles brothers were dark figures.[5]