Allen Dulles Allen Welsh Dulles ( April 7 , 1893 – January 29 , 1969 ) was an American diplomat , lawyer , banker , and public official who became the first civilian and the longest - serving ( 1953 – 1961 ) Director of Central Intelligence ( de facto head of the U . S . Central Intelligence Agency ) and a member of the Warren Commission . Between stints of government service , Dulles was a corporate lawyer and partner at Sullivan & Cromwell . His older brother , John Foster Dulles , was the Secretary of State during the Eisenhower Administration . Early life and family . He was born on April 7 , 1893 , in Watertown , New York , and grew up in a family where public service was valued and world affairs were a common topic of discussion . Dulles was one of five children born to Presbyterian minister Allen Macy Dulles and his wife Edith Dulles ( Foster ) . He was five years younger than his brother John Foster Dulles , Dwight D . Eisenhower ' s Secretary of State and chairman and senior partner of Sullivan & Cromwell , and two years older than his sister , diplomat Eleanor Lansing Dulles . His maternal grandfather was John W . Foster , who was Secretary of State under Benjamin Harrison . His paternal grandfather , John Welsh Dulles , had been a Presbyterian missionary in India . His uncle ( by marriage ) , Robert Lansing , was also a U . S . Secretary of State . Dulles was also uncle to Avery Dulles , who was a Jesuit priest , theologian , a cardinal of the Catholic Church , and served as the Laurence J . McGinley Professor of Religion and Society at Fordham University from 1988 to 2008 . Dulles graduated from Princeton University , where he participated in the American Whig - Cliosophic Society , and entered the diplomatic service in 1916 . When Dulles was serving in Switzerland , he was responsible for reviewing and rejecting Vladimir Lenin ' s application for a visa to the United States . In 1920 , he married Clover Todd ( March 5 , 1894 - April 15 , 1974 ) . Allen and Clover Dulles had three children ; two daughters : Clover D . Jebsen , ( " Toddy " ) , and Joan Buresch Dulles Molden , ( " Joan Buresch " ) ; and one son , Allen Macy Dulles , Jr . , who was wounded and permanently disabled in the Korean War , when as a Marine , a mortar fragment penetrated his brain , relegating him to supervised care for life . According to his sister , Eleanor , Dulles had " at least a hundred " extramarital affairs , including some during his tenure with the CIA . In 1921 , while at the US Embassy in Istanbul , Dulles may have helped to expose the infamous " Protocols of the Elders of Zion " as a forgery to Philip Graves , a journalist working for " The Times " of London . The article was reprinted in " The New York Times " . In 1926 , he earned a law degree from George Washington University Law School and took a job at Sullivan and Cromwell , the New York firm where his brother , John Foster Dulles , was a partner . He became a director of the Council on Foreign Relations in 1927 , the first new director since the Council ' s foundation in 1921 . He was the Council ' s secretary from 1933 to 1944 . Early career and war years . After Dulles graduated from college , he became a diplomat , and while posted in various European countries he gathered intelligence information . In the 1920s , he served five years as chief of the Near East division of the United States Department of State . From time to time during the late 1920s and early 1930s , he served as legal adviser to the delegation on arms limitation at the League of Nations . There he had the opportunity to meet with Adolf Hitler , Benito Mussolini , Maxim Litvinov , and the leaders of Britain and France . In 1935 Dulles returned from a business trip to Germany appalled by the Nazi treatment of German Jews , and despite his brother ' s objections , led a movement within the law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell to close their Berlin office . As a result of Dulles ' efforts , the Berlin office was closed and the firm ceased to conduct business within Nazi Germany . As the Republican Party began to divide into isolationist and interventionist factions , Dulles became an outspoken interventionist , running unsuccessfully in 1938 for the Republican nomination in the Sixteenth Congressional District of New York on a platform calling for a strengthening of U . S . defenses . Dulles collaborated with Hamilton Fish Armstrong , the editor of " Foreign Affairs " magazine , on two books , " Can We Be Neutral ? " ( 1936 ) , and " Can America Stay Neutral ? " ( 1939 ) . They concluded that diplomatic , military , and economic isolation , in a traditional sense , were no longer possible in an increasingly interdependent international system . Dulles helped a number of German Jews , such as the banker Paul Kemper , escape to the United States from Nazi Germany . Dulles was transferred to Bern , Switzerland , where he lived at Herrengasse 23 for the duration of World War II . As Swiss Director of the U . S . Office of Strategic Services , Dulles worked on intelligence regarding German plans and activities , and established wide contacts with German émigrés , resistance figures , and anti - Nazi intelligence officers . He was assisted in intelligence - gathering activities by a German emigrant named Gero von Schulze - Gaevernitz . Dulles also received valuable information from Fritz Kolbe , a German diplomat . Kolbe supplied secret documents regarding active German spies and plans regarding the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter . Although Washington barred Dulles from making firm commitments to the plotters of the 20 July 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler , the conspirators nonetheless gave him reports on developments in Germany , including sketchy but accurate warnings of plans for Hitler ’ s V - 1 and V - 2 missiles . Dulles was involved in Operation Sunrise , secret negotiations in March 1945 to arrange a local surrender of German forces in northern Italy . After the war in Europe , Dulles served for six months as the Office of Strategic Services Berlin station chief , and later as station chief in Bern . CIA career . The Office of Strategic Services was dissolved in October 1945 and its functions transferred to the State and War Departments . The Central Intelligence Agency was created by Congress with the passage of the National Security Act of 1947 , signed into law by President Harry S . Truman . Rear Admiral Roscoe H . Hillenkoetter was the first Director . In the 1948 Presidential election , Dulles was chief advisor to Republican nominee Thomas E . Dewey . The Dulles brothers and James Forrestal helped form the Office of Policy Coordination . In 1953 , Dulles became the first civilian CIA director . The Agency ' s covert operations were an important part of the Eisenhower administration ' s new Cold War national security policy known as the " New Look " . Under Dulles ' direction , the CIA created MK - Ultra , a top secret mind control research project which was managed by Sidney Gottlieb . Dulles also personally oversaw Operation Mockingbird , a program which influenced foreign and domestic media companies . At Dulles ' request , President Eisenhower demanded that Senator Joseph McCarthy discontinue issuing subpoenas against the CIA . In March 1950 , McCarthy had initiated a series of investigations into potential communist subversion of the Agency . Although none of the investigations revealed any wrongdoing , the hearings were still potentially damaging , not only to the CIA ' s reputation but also to the security of sensitive information . Documents made public in 2004 revealed that the CIA , under Dulles ' orders , had broken into McCarthy ' s Senate office and also intentionally fed disinformation to him in order to discredit him , in order to stop his investigation of communism infiltrators of the CIA . In the early 1950s , the United States Air Force conducted a competition for a new photo reconnaissance aircraft . Lockheed Aircraft Corporation ' s Skunk Works submitted a design number called the CL - 282 , which married sailplane - like wings to the body of a supersonic interceptor . This aircraft was rejected by the Air Force , but several of the civilians on the review board took notice , and Edwin Land presented a proposal for the aircraft to Dulles . The aircraft became what is known as the U - 2 ' spy plane ' , and it was initially operated by CIA pilots . Its introduction into operational service in 1957 greatly enhanced the CIA ' s ability to monitor Soviet activity through overhead photo surveillance . The aircraft eventually entered service with the Air Force . The Soviet Union captured a U - 2 in 1960 during Dulles ' term as CIA chief . Dulles is considered one of the essential creators of the modern United States intelligence system and was an indispensable guide to clandestine operations during the Cold War . He established intelligence networks worldwide to check and counter Soviet and eastern European communist advances as well as international communist movements . Although Dulles ' involvement in the Bay of Pigs endeavor gained him enough ill repute to be fired from the CIA during Kennedy ' s administration , he didn ' t let this stifle his ambition . Somehow he found himself reinstated and was allowed to serve on the commission to investigate the murder of the very man who fired him . Involvement in coups against governments of Iran and Guatemala . In 1953 , Dulles was involved , along with Frank Wisner , in Operation Ajax , the covert operation that led to the removal of Mohammad Mossadeq , prime minister of Iran , and his replacement with Mohammad Reza Pahlavi , Shah of Iran . Rumors of a Soviet takeover of the country had surfaced due to the nationalization of the Anglo - Iranian Oil Company . British diplomat Christopher Woodhouse had pitched the idea of a coup d ' état to President Eisenhower to try to regain British control of the oil company . President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman of Guatemala was removed in 1954 in a CIA - led coup carried out under the code name Operation PBSUCCESS . Dulles was on the board of trustees of the United Fruit Company , which stood to lose farmland to expropriation under proposed land reforms . Sabotage against Cuba : Operation 40 . At the direction of President Eisenhower , Dulles established Operation 40 , comprising 40 officials and agents whose primary area of operations was the Caribbean region , including Cuba . On March 4 , 1960 , " La Coubre " , a ship flying a Belgian flag , exploded in Havana Bay . It was loaded with arms and ammunition destined for the armed forces of the Cuban government of Fidel Castro . The explosion killed 75 people and over 200 were injured . Fabian Escalante , an officer of the Department of State Security ( G - 2 ) , later claimed that this was the first successful act carried out by Operation 40 . During the Kennedy Administration , Dulles faced increasing criticism . The pro - American but unpopular regimes in Iran and Guatemala that Dulles had helped put in place were widely regarded as brutal and corrupt . Several failed assassination plots utilizing CIA - recruited operatives from the Mafia and anti - Castro Cubans directly against Castro undermined the CIA ' s credibility . The reputation of the agency and its director declined drastically after the Bay of Pigs Invasion fiasco , and Dulles and his staff ( including Deputy Director for Plans Richard M . Bissell , Jr . and Deputy Director Charles Cabell ) were forced to resign in September 1961 . President Kennedy reportedly said he wanted to " splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds . " Later life . Dulles published the book " The Craft of Intelligence " in 1963 , and edited " Great True Spy Stories " in 1968 . On November 29 , 1963 , President Lyndon Baines Johnson appointed Dulles as one of seven commissioners of the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of the U . S . President John F . Kennedy . The appointment was later criticized by some historians , who have noted that Kennedy had fired him , and he was therefore unlikely to be impartial in passing the judgments charged to the Warren Commission . In 1966 , Princeton University ' s American Whig - Cliosophic Society awarded Dulles the James Madison Award for Distinguished Public Service . He died on January 29 , 1969 , of influenza , complicated by pneumonia , at the age of 75 , in Georgetown , D . C . He was buried in Greenmount Cemetery in Baltimore , Maryland . In the media . " Seventeen Moments of Spring " ( 1973 ) , a Soviet television miniseries in which Vyacheslav Salevich depicts Dulles ' role in Operation Sunrise during World War II . " The Good Shepherd " ( 2006 ) , a fictional film in which William Hurt portrays the fictional head of the CIA , Phillip Allen , who appears to be based on Dulles . " JFK " ( 1991 ) , a fictional film that depicts Jim Garrison , a New Orleans District Attorney , as suspecting Dulles as a participant in the cover - up surrounding Kennedy ' s assassination and attempts to subpoena him . " Nick and Jake " ( 2012 ) , a fictional novel co - written by Tad Richards and Jonathan Richards and published by Arcade Publishing . Allen Dulles is depicted as plotting a coup to overthrow the government of France . " Liberation " ( 1970 – 71 ) , a multinational fictional film series that shows Dulles in a photograph torn apart by Joseph Stalin in " " . " The Honor Of Spies ( 2009 ) " in the " Honor Bound series " and also the " Men At War series " , a fictional novel series written by W . E . B . Griffin ' s . Dulles is portrayed as part of the European Head of the OSS and the Swiss Agent in Charge respectively . " The Commission " ( 2003 ) , a fictional film that depicts Dulles , played by Jack Betts , as a participant in the Warren Commission and investigator into the Kennedy assassination . " The Company " ( 2007 ) , an American miniseries based on the novel " The Company : A Novel of the CIA " ( 2002 ) by American novelist Robert Littell . The " FX " cartoon comedy " Archer " mentions Dulles in a 2012 episode while discussing Operation Gladio .