Gentleman Spy

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This is the first full-length biography of the man historian Michael Beschloss calls the keystone figure in the history of American intelligence. Allen Dulles (1893-1969) served in the Office of Strategic Services in Europe during WWII and was named director of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1953, serving under Eisenhower and Kennedy. In an overlong, sometimes tedious narrative, Grose (Israel in the Mind of America) describes how Dulles oversaw the firm establishment of the CIA in the Washington power structure during the Eisenhower years (his older brother, John Foster Dulles, was then the Secretary of State), only to be forced out after the CIA's failure in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. Later appointed to the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy, Dulles became its most diligent member, according to Grose, and a supporter of the view that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Other controversial issues explored include Dulles's exploitation of ex-Nazi Reinhard Gehler's spy network in the early years of the Cold War, and whether JFK authorized, or even knew about, CIA attempts to liquidate Castro. Grose delves unenlighteningly into Dulles's shortcomings as husband and father; he kept a mistress or two and spent little time at home. Photos. (Nov.)

Library Journal

Benefiting from access to newly opened sources, this book describes how Dulles used his natural charm to win friends, discover information, and work his way to the top of the CIA. Grose, who has years of experience in foreign affairs both as a journalist and a State Department official, also paints an interesting picture of the powerful, moneyed world of international finance and politics that most of us never see. He goes fairly easy on Dulles, concentrating on his official work and delving less deeply into his personal life; in many ways, this book reflects Dulles's own style. For a more critical view of Dulles's complex relations with fascists and European industrialists before, during, and after World War II, see Burton Hersh's The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA (LJ 2/15/92). Recommended for informed readers. (Index not seen.)-Daniel K. Blewett, Loyola Univ. Lib., Chicago

Gilbert Taylor

Filling a sorely felt biographical need, Grose presents an insightful, respectful, but hardly fawning story of the CIA's director in the 1950s. In every respect, Allen Dulles was a member of the eastern establishment: grandson of a secretary of state, Princeton '14, liberal Republican, Wall Street lawyer, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, pipe-smoking tweed wearer, and founding operative of the OSS. Grose goes far beyond the superficial resume in fleshing out his subject, who acquired a fascination with the great game of espionage after reading Kipling's "Kim". During his intelligence career, his marital life barely existed, but few readers will care about wife Clover's tribulations, included as obligatory chaff to the tales of Dulles' career as an intelligence executive. He rang the "big bell," attracting anyone who could help, an outlook born of a story he incessantly told of how he blew a history-changing chance by refusing to speak with a then-unknown Lenin in 1917. Grose then grippingly chonicles the most dashing phase of the Dulles drama during World War II; details the end of the amiable spymaster's career with the Bay of Pigs fiasco; and concludes with criticism of Dulles' indiscretions as a member of the Warren Commission. There's always more to tell of any spy's secret actions, but other biographers will be hard-pressed to outdo Grose's research and description of Dulles' personality and career.