And during this period one was immersing myself in the lives of these extraordinary brothers, i began to realize that cold war, when they were in power in the 1950s, these were immensely powerful figures and they could make and break government. And they certainly did. Probably every literate human being on the face of the earth knew the name dulles. And now the dulles brothers, its like we have forgotten him. I realize this while we were writing the book because several times when friends of mine asked me what you working on, and i said i would than writing a book about dulles, they would look at me and say the airport . [laughter] and the dulles approached the world did not work out well for the United States. I think that thats part of the reason that we have airbrush them out of our history. They tell us things about ourselves that we really dont like to see or feel or hear. As a result, we have allowed them to shrink from history. Nations like to think of themselves as good. We all have a positive self image of ourselves. Those efforts contradict a good selfimage and are ones that we can to minimize and forget about. We like to pretend they never happened. And to a certain degree this has happened, as with the dulles brothers. They figure that figured that out with the course of writing this book. And i found the video clip of president john f. Kennedy opening dulles airport. And after John Foster Dulles died, president eisenhower announced immediately that it would be named dulles airport. And soon afterward, john f. Kennedy came into office and kennedy didnt like this idea at all. He was a crusty old cold warrior and kennedy wanted to present a different kind of an image. And so he let it be known that the airport was not going to be named dulles, but perhaps chantilly international, some talk that might be named after george marshall. But there was an immediate pushback. Eisenhower and allen dulles, who is alive and come up with a lot of pressure on kennedy and finally he relented. And he agreed to name the airport after him. And in this video clip, you will see him giving a speech in and pulling aside a curtain and there is that giant bust of John Foster Dulles who stands in the center of the airport. And those of you who have been here, might ask yourselves what brought you back. Well, i have asked myself that. And of course made a special trip during one of my travels in order to go look at the bus, which is right at the center of the airport that the architect had designed as a way of calming the turbulence. In stressedout travelers. And so all you have to do is find the reflecting pool and there is a statue. So where is the reflecting pool . Well, there is no reflecting pool. I asked a Security Guard where it is. And they dont know about any reflecting pool. Okay, so where is the bus for him . Well, some of the Security Guards had no idea where the bus was in some of them had no idea who John Foster Dulles was. [laughter] long story, but with the help of the metropolitan washington airport authority, i finally tracked down the bust of John Foster Dulles. And it is in a closed Conference Room opposite baggage claim number three. [laughter] and this really reflects what has happened to the reputation of the dulles brothers. It is my desire with this book to bring them back into life in a way that shows how influential they actually were. And i have another goal with this book. With these two remarkable figures coming to biography. But its more than that. Im trying to use the framework of biography to ask a larger question, which is, why does the United States at the way that it does the world . Why we like this . And why is it that every time there is some kind of a crisis or confrontation or a people in bangladesh or libya or elsewhere, we feel that we have to take sides . Who we want to crush . And we want is for . What do we want to do . The idea that we are going to sit back and say that the bolivians were they have a problem and they will resolve it, then we will just wait and see what unfolds. This is inconceivable to the dulles brothers. And i think that that is a strain that is woven into the body of politics. Americans dont have this idea that we should just observe the world and watch it unfold. We have to evolve everywhere. And in fact, the dulles brothers were founders of the council on foreign relations. While i was researching that aspect of the book, i realized that the council actually had a slogan that i had not realized. And if you look on the magazine, you will see that they have a logo and the logo is a fine points and then there is a little scribble in the they are that says i never really paid attention to it. But i look at it more closely and its a latin word. And it means everywhere. And that is the answer to these great questions, where does the United States have vital interests and where must the United States involve . Where must we have operations underway on the time . Everywhere . And that was the concept of guided the dulles brothers and the foreignpolicy establishment the rule this country for the first half of the 20th century ride into the 1960s. What is remarkable about this is how small it was. And in those days American Foreign policy was really a problem of a very small group of people that went to the same schools and they were all white protestant males and they were all wealthy and they all worked for the same law firms and the same investment banks and they all have the same outlook on the world. It was a very inbred group and they all shared the same view of the world. The dulles brothers were perhaps the ultimate exemplary part of that view. And now in my book i do not just talk about the dulles brothers as political figures but individuals. That is why take their story all the way back to Early Childhood and before. And they really were individuals of American History. And so let me tell you about the forces that shape them. Because i think that these are also forces that shaped our country as well. The dulles brothers are us and we are them. They did not hijack america or American Foreign policy. They did what we wanted. And i think that that might be one of the reasons that we forgot them. If we really want to talk about who is to blame for the crises that they left behind. Better rather than point a finger at the picture of them on the wall, maybe look into the mirror and be a little bit more effective. So what were these forces that shaped these remarkable brothers . Well, the first one was missionary calvinism. The dulles brothers grew up in a personage and her father was a clergyman and her grandfather was a clergyman in their greatgrandfather was a clergyman and many other uncles and great uncles were clergyman and also missionaries. Her grandfather, for example. He went off to india to convert the heathens. And at home they were always having missionaries that were on their way from china or the middle east and they were immersed in the missionary ibos. And this was not just a bland orange hetero form of christianity. It was a very specific form. And it had to essential principles. The first principle is that the world is made up of good forces and evil forces. The second is that christians do not have the right to stay at home and hope that there are good times over evil. They have to go out into the world and convert the on unconverted and you are not the filling the purpose for which god has placed you on earth. If you believe that about religion, it is a very short step to believing the same thing about geopolitics. You believe that government and political movements in the world are either good or they are evil. And as an american, we cannot sit home and watch this conflict unfold. You must go out and be sure that good times over evil. And this is a view that is actually different from the worldview that people hold in many other parts of the world in many other cultures. In much of the world, people put up with the idea that all the individuals and governments are made up of good and evil impulses and these come out in different supports to depending on the circumstances. And the dulles brothers probably die. The world was divided between the forces of light and the forces of dark. And so this was this was one of the key forces that talked about this with the dulles brothers. And the second was their upbringing at the pinnacle of the american elite. And so these boys grew up in the town of watertown, new york, off on the shores for the new york rich. And their father was a pastor there. And every morning during the summertime they would get up early and take a cold shower and the only time that their father permitted. And they would say their prayers with their fathers guidance and sing a couple of hams and then they were free to rush down to the shores of the lake were there to beloved relatives were waiting to take them out on a little vote to stop the small mouths and trent mouth bass. These were the two figures that were the dominant influence in one of them was their grandfather, he was a former secretary of state in the 1890s. In fact, he was the first secretary of state to preside over the american government. He was secretary of state in the United States launched this operation to overthrow the government of hawaii and bring hawaii into the United States. And so the family changed business even before it the dulles brothers were born. And grandfather foster, as they called him, he had been a pioneer who had obtained the wilderness and gone out west and the idea of manifest destiny. Think of how this span of time passed just from the grandfather to grandson. He campaigned for Abraham Lincoln and his grandson, allen dulles and John Foster Dulles projected power all over the nuclear age. Any other figure that was with them on their daily fishing outings was Robert Lansing who is also a curious state and he was secretary of state during world war i. And so you have these figures who themselves embody the idea of america, at least as they understood it. And they transferred to the dulles brothers, not just the ideals, and the beliefs, but the vocabulary and the perceptions. The grandfather, as they called him, he was so infatuated with his grandson and he thought it was not enough to spend summers with them. He wanted to bring them down to washington dc to live with them for some months during the winter. And they spent a number of the winters at the foster mansion next to the dupont circle. And here they were having dinner every night with william taft, woodrow wilson, andrew carnegie, and all of these were their dinner partners than they were 10 years old. And so of course they did not participate in the dinner conversation. But they absorb so much during those long evenings. This was part of their training to join the american elite. In fact, i discovered that allen dulles who started attending these dinners when he was about eight years old had a wonderful habit and its interesting when you realize that he became the head of the cia. He would go upstairs and unlike his brother would go to sleep, he would go to his desk and write reports about what he saw with each of the people at the dinner. And not only what they said, but what he thought they really meant. And he thought that they were already part of the psychology. He later wrote that the fishing trips that he took were very influential in pushing him towards a career that he had in espionage and covert action because you catch the pitch and you play him and remove them you move them and you try to slowly reel them in until they get to the point where they are almost grateful to be caught. And so this was the lesson that he took from the fishing trip when he was a young boy. And so that became the second force that shaped them. Their introduction to the highest levels of the american elite at a very young age. And the third came later in the lives of the dulles brothers. Both of them went to work for the unique Corporate Law firm and in fact the older brother was a managing partner for 30 years. Allen dulles also worked there for decades. And they were no normal law firm. They could draft a contract for if you wanted to they could represent her in the courtroom. But that was not what they existed to do. Sullivan and, had a specialty in their specialty was pressuring small and weak countries to do a Big American Corporations wanted them to do. And that is why almost every Big American Corporation hired them in effect, the dulles brothers, to defend him. John foster dulles had just gone to work for a company for 50 a month, which, of course, grandfather foster supplemented. When he was given his first assignment, and its a classic one because it shows what they did, and american Agricultural Products company had hired them to do exactly the kind of thing that they were famous for. And this company wanted to export flower to ghana. But diana had terrorists to protect domestic agricultural industry. And so sullivan and cromwell were asked by the American Company if they can make those tears go away. And John Foster Dulles got the job. He went there and he made the Leaders Debate included an offer they couldnt refuse. And so it was only a few years after that that he was given another job that really affected what they could do. And that law firm represented most of the American Corporations that were active, almost all of the big American Sugar and fruit companies, plus the owners of the Cuban Railroad lines and cement companies, they were all the clients. And in the second decade of the 20th century, an election was held in the convent conservative party, which had been happy to give to American Corporations everything theyve wanted was defeated. The liberal party won the election. But the conservatives refused to give up the offense. So they had a rebellion to force the country to observe the result of the election. And the American Corporation was terrified by this because the liberal party was committed to land reform, and of course the way they were going to get this land, they were going to get it from the big American Sugar company and they wanted to back back a tear of all around it to promote the sugar industry. So in short the liberal party was a nightmare for american corporate interests represented by sullivan and, all. John foster dulles was given the job. The next morning he went to new york and washington dc and he went to see the secretary of state, who happened to be uncle bert and he told uncle bert that we should send two warships to cuba to the eastern end of the island, one on the north and one on the south and then they should put down the rebellion. And one day later they were dispatched and they did go to cuba and 6000 marines crushed the liberal rebellion and this is the kind of thing that they were used to doing that was their job and that is what they did for a living. And that is what made them a desirable firm. This was the third force that shaped the dulles brothers. And the interest of Big American Corporations in the United States were the same thing. This was the way that they saw the world and they took that into office. And so did he see them being shaped by missionary calvinism in the lead of the United States into which they were born. And the idea of american Corporate Power. And so in the early 1950s, both of the dulles brothers became active in washington and john dulles was the principal advisor to Dwight Eisenhower when he ran for president. And allen dulles got into the cia in a secondary position even before he came to office. After eisenhowers election in 1952, he named these two brothers to the top positions in his government. He became the secretary of state and his younger brother became director of the cia. And this was the first and only time in history that siblings controlled the covert side of American Foreign policy. They functioned essentially with two jaws of a serpent. Not organically connected, but always working towards the same goal. So these individuals thrive and John Foster Dulles was said to be a great lawyer in the United States. So because of their success in protecting the interests of the Big American Corporations or their clients, they were able to guarantee to their clients that if you have interest in a foreign country and you hire us, your interest will be safe. And so it was the Gold Standard that kept them so rich and kept them so desirable for American Corporations. In 1951 they suffered two terrible blows as brothers. Blows that they have ever suffered before or ever even imagined. And the first one happened in guatemala. The elected government under the president at the time was the approval of the Democratic Congress of guatemala and he decided on a land reform act and not act had a principal cause. That those who own huge amounts of land and are not using most of it has to sell the unused land to the government. And the government would then slices up and give parcels out of land. So the biggest land owner in guatemala was the banana company. And they had over half a million acres of unused land. And i think one of the real reasons they wanted to see this as they didnt want any other company to compete with them. And so this land reform act was passed in the brothers protested vigorously and so did the United States government. There was nothing that they could do. As private lawyers they had to sit back and watch one of their most important clients suffer a terrible blow in guatemala. United food had two other Subsidiary Companies as well to help solidify their control over guatemala. They own all of the rail lines and Electric Company to produce the electricity and all three of these companies were clients of the dulles brothers. And so was the Schroeder Bank, which was a financial agent for all of these companies. And in fact allen dulles sat on the board. And both brothers were stockholders as well. And so in 1951 they had to face the directors, which had been a client of sullivan and calm while more than half a century. To say that we failed. And there is nothing that we can do. And the brothers did not like having to give a message like that out. Theyd never forgot that. But just as their rage was rising, they suffered another blow from the other side of the world and they had also come to power with the nationalist movement emerged after the Second World War under the Prime Minister and the government have unanimous vote voted to nationalize Iranian Oil Industry in that industry was owned by one company, the Anglo Iranian Oil company. In that company had a financial agent was the Schroeder Bank and as i said, it was eight company of which allen dulles was part of. And so they had to say we failed you again. We couldnt protect you and there was not anything they could do with private lawyers. But they were a deep grudge and they came into office at the beginning of 1953. In their very first project, which they started before eisenhower was a nongraded. They couldnt even wait for their first day of work. And so by august of that year he was gone and that was the end of democracy at that point. Then the president of guatemala suffered the same fate and those are the first monsters at the dulles brothers went out to destroy. It is called six monsters. And i use that word because im taking it from a wonderful speech that was taken by John Quincy Adams in 1821 and he made that famous statement. That america does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. But the dulles brothers did. And they saw these monsters as the face of evil that they had seen in the evil that they saw in bolshevism. And they naturally equated both of these leaders as tools of the soviet. And that is the way the world looks at him. And i found an interesting document written by the ambassador from brazil in the United States during the period when the brothers were overthrowing us and walmart. They came to see him and they said, how do you know that the Land Reform Program was ordered by the kremlin . And he said that dulles told him that it is true that we have no evidence that we are proceeding on the assumption that must be solved. That was the way that they solved the world. And so the first two monsters that they went out to slay in the world were against whom they had a deep grudge from their days as private lawyers. And by the time we get to the middle of 1954, both of those monsters were gone. And one of the things that i understood as i began to research the secret history of the brothers is that what i knew and i think what most of us know about the 1950s is fundamentally mistaken and we think of this as an age of peace and we were at a continual war and we didnt know it at that the time and we didnt see it. Only now can we understand how they never finished one operation without another. They were not the kind of people that wanted to sit back and reserve and reflect. They always wanted to be an action. And that is why the subtitle of the book is their secret world war. And so in 1954 with the first two projects finished, the brothers went out to get the next situation and that was ho chi minh in vietnam. It had been pretty easy to brush aside this. Wouldnt be any problem, they figured. But a conference was held in geneva in which the powers came together to decide the future of vietnam and it was actually held at the same time that the french suffered their epic defeat. After that defeat the french with great pain realized that they could not win the war and ho chi minh was immensely powerful and popular and although they did not like it, they were just going to have to accept the fact that they could not hold on. Winston churchill had the same idea. He came to the conclusion that he told the brothers and a wonderful phrase that you certainly expect from a person that has been through so many victories and defeats, that the loss of the fortress must be saved. And essentially what he was saying is we hate it, but he won the war, so lets move on and not try to fight a battle that is not going to help us win. But john dulles refused to accept that. And he believed that he could do what the french and british and the japanese had all failed to do. Which is to take over vietnam. It is the only time in American History that a secretary of state had abandoned a major conference in the middle and the reason he did this was because he understood that he was isolated in the geneva conference is going to come to the conclusion that a part of vietnam had to be turned over to ho chi minh. Foster dulles refused to accept this and he came home and he immediately launched a largescale covert operation in South Vietnam under the geneva agreement, as many of you know. It was partitioned to North Vietnam and South Vietnam and in 1956 there was an election that would become the leader of the country. So the dulles brothers decided to launch enough covert operations so that the election of 1956 would wind up electing someone that we liked. And we had her own candidate barry and ho chi minh would then be brushed aside. And as the election came close he will win probably 80 and as a result of this the dulles brothers decided that we are not holding this up. And so think of this. On the one day that john dulles flew home from geneva and made one decision that they are not going to do with the others wanted, we are going to fight, without that are never would have been americans involved in vietnam at all. The entire vietnam tragedy as a result of the one decision by john dulles. There is no single individual responsible for american involvement in vietnam. So that might be the most titanic mark in history. And the covert operations did not turn out quite so successful. Most of you know how that ended because you can only imagine how our country and the world would have been so very different had foster dulles not taken it upon himself to make that choice. [inaudible question] well, and teaching in universities and youre not supposed to get involved in counterfactual. But many are not allowed to do that. So as they were trying to fight ho chi minh, they turned to another asian leader of indonesia and they hated him because they represented the ideology, the most hateful ideology in the world and it was interesting. They describe it is fundamentally a moral and he believed that everything in the world was in the framework of the cold war and the people like this in indonesia were hateful figures because they were trying to destroy the foundation of conflict that defined the cold war, without which there could not be a cold war. And so they have this desire to keep themselves out of the cold war. Hoping to launch a full scale civil war and with all of this, its the most hit hidden episode and we watched a huge operation either overthrowing him or splitting up so that we some of the island would come under our control. Until about 10 years later in the mid1960s, the tensions that began festering during the civil war exploded with violence and Something Like a million indonesians were murdered and not period of time in 1955 and 1966. And so after the spectacular failure in indonesia, the brothers moved on to their next monster. Which was another neutralist who also seemed unfriendly and that was the individual in the congo. He was the first elected leader of the congo and he came into office immediately after belgium had declared independence and he was immediately a hateful figure into the dulles brothers in the long with the colonialist who feared this and the cia launched a largescale operation to destroy him. President eisenhower actually was directly involved in ordering the cia to assassinate him and he was overthrown and assassinated after less than a year in power. And when you think about what you have been reading in the congo in the last two years, this is the world war and there are millions of deaths over the last decade or so of the heck into which the congo has fallen to a certain degree, the longterm effect of the dulles brothers intervention. And there never was a democratic election after the one that elected him. And it wasnt just the overthrow of individuals but the destruction of a democratic system. And for the final monster that they win out against the world was fidel castro and that operation did not turn out so successfully either. And it was immediately after president kennedy was elected in 1960, only two days after his election that he held a press conference in hyannisport in the first announcement that he made in his First Press Conference was to say that he had asked allen dulles to stay on the head of the cia and he then proceeded to plan that had already been hatched under the Eisenhower Administration to launch the invasion of the bay of pigs in which fidel castro would be overthrown. And so during my research, particularly in these archives, i came up with a new case about the bay of pigs invasion and i think it shed a new light on why that invasion collapsed. During the runup to the invasion, major changes were made and it was decided that the invaders would land on a beach faraway from mountains and if they have trouble they can escape into the mountains. It was decided that there were not enough to take out the castro air force. And another of other decisions were made to restrict this to such a degree that the two top organizers decided eight days beforehand that this will not work and in a word it was a terrible disaster. So what do they do this information . Welcome you would like to think that they would have gone to their boss and said, our plan will end in a terrible disaster. But i discovered that allen dulles was actually not involved at all in the planning of the bay of pigs invasion and he turns the process over to his deputy and completely exempt himself from planet. When he was president he didnt say anything. So i think that i read all this and i was very puzzled about why this could be. But washington he was not even in washington on the day of the invasion. Involved himself at the airport and said how are things going and they said not very well. And he said oh, really. And so then dulles and vitamin for a whiskey and hes not interested. And he starts talking about baseball and other things. And i found it very puzzling. Until was only a few days later after the bay of pigs fiasco that allen dulles was found wandering aimlessly in georgetown are not able to find his way home. And i found a quote from one of his young relatives who said i think he was suffering from what we would today call alzheimers. And i really believe the reason that he had done this completely was that he was already suffering from the beginnings of dementia. And that is why the two planners went to the deputy and said its going to be a terrible disaster. This will persuade them to stay on and sure enough, it was a terrible disaster. John foster dulles died in office and he had resigned a couple of weeks before and when he died entire nation pledged into grief and it was a huge event and he was a snarling tough i dont really like. But when he died, he didnt really trigger an outbreak of admiration. And he lived to see his reputation be declined. By the time he died in 1969, many of them were coming to light in so that may have intensified this slide away from reality. And so one of the fascinating things about the brothers is that they grew up together and develop the same way of looking at the world. And once they were in office they never really had to consult any experts or anyone else about the progress. So if they planned this with the state department and the cia aimed at the government and the state department that would sit around a table and talk about whether this was a good idea or not and how to do it and not never really happened. All it took was a wink and nod between two brothers and a converted American Foreign policy into an echo chamber and they were exact ideological twins. But in their personality, they were total opposites. John foster dulles scowl and cringe when he was meanspirited. And i bet even his friends and like him. [laughter] he had a series of awkward habits which i catalog in one of my favorite parts of the book and at dinner parties used to like to roll candles up into a ball and in shoe on it. The candle wax. And he hed like to stir his drink with his finger and he was exactly the opposite. He was like a character out of the great gatsby. A sparkling conversationalist. The great seducer. He had 100 mr. Says. Book to bring them back to life. The first takes the brothers out of the Conference Room at the baggage claim number three and bring it back up to the place people can see it in the dulles airport. But i have another suggestion. One of the greatest risks of political art that is the depiction of 1954, so when it happened there was an explosion of anger across latin america and many protest demonstrations and a protest demonstration in mexico. She was an diene and she was under Doctors Orders not to leave her bed. After the overthrow she insisted on leaving her bed to show the repudiation against and you can actually see pictures she died 11 days later he and he went on to paint this spectacular masterpiece glorious victory which i reproduce in the book so they are right in the middle of and some of them as eisenhower and the children with had been in the background carrying heavy loads and as i was writing this book i thought to myself ive got to see this painting with a detail on the internet and reductions but what i want to see it to realize, so what i couldnt quite find at it and nobody had to hire someone in mexico in moscow and the museum it turns out that he was a communist and send it to the people of the soviet union but they didnt want it to display a heels openminded and founded the museum where the painting her, is the. I contacted the Deputy Director through a russian friend of mine and i get back a note and i tell them and coming to moscow and the note came back saying you want to see the picture hanging here but unfortunately i have to tell you its not hanging here, its full drop in the basement of the museum. If you want to come to moscow i can take you into the basement to show you, but i cannot enroll it because we do not have any space for that. So what it means is that this spectacular masterpiece full of meaning for us is out of spite and who knows if or when it will ever be seen again. I have a modest proposal for what should be done with that today it should be enrolled, but actually the audience that needs to see it is not in russia today and i cant even think the audience needs to see it in guatemala. The audience that needs to see it is us the to the medish should be in the United States. Maybe we could make a deal in a see if he would send it over to us and i have the exact spot i want it to hang. I want it to be the centerpiece of the airport right in front. [applause] said that is my modest proposal. I will sit here and sell books in front of the mural but i think it would be a great opportunity for americans to contemplate what only who this airport was named for, but who they were and who we are because we cannot separate what they did and who they were from what we have done and what we are. I vp, they are us and we are them. The eighth reflect america and if we want to understand what america is and has been and what america could be, we need to focus on the messages that they are giving us. Thank you. [applause] triet if you want to ask a question please let for the microphone. They are us and we are they. They represent not us but their clientele. You describe them as the elite. I want to know why you describe what you can inflate the interest they serve as they are us and we are them. We are not of the elite or the ruling class. They are. When the advance the agenda in vietnam and advance their agenda in indonesia and their agenda and iraq or agenda in guatemala and they were not representing the cuts. They were representing their client, their corporate customers who were investing in the Service Provided to them by the legal firm of sullivan who is paid a mildly to not represent us but to represent them. Among other things you left out of your narrative and the collaboration was not the intelligence officer. And therein lies the problem of what we face now is that the cia basically is a Nazi Organization you left out the commission. I didnt want to tell you anything because then you wouldnt want to buy the book. Why did they put him on the commission . Let me make two comments about what you said. First of all the point about whether they are up or not is a good one. I, however, would like to offer this. I think it is a little too easy for us as ordinary americans to say theres a certain elite of that people who do bad things but we are not responsible for that. We are not part of that and they are not representing us. I use that word after, not by accident but by consideration because i think its important for all of us to understand we are citizens, we have the ability to speak, and therefore it is too easy to say that a couple of people pushed us in a different direction and no one else wanted it. Actually, i think that if they were reflecting during the 1950s what most americans wanted. Did they want this because of what the media had told them and what the Political Climate was and because they had seen so many western movies about how theres a few bad people in town and you need one good man with a gun to shoot them and then everybody is happy . You can answer that for yourself, that i think it is dangerous to try to blame bad things in the world on just a few bad people. As for the collaboration, you are quite right it wasnt just that they hired as a former nazi spy master to be essentially the overseer of the new cia spy ring in Central Europe and in germany, that in the 1930s john foster was the principal agent in the United States for raising money for corporations and banks during the nazi era and he saw almost 1 billion worth of bonds for companies in germany during the nazi era and actually spoke out intensely against american involvement in that. I have a great quote that says only fantasy entertains the idea that germany or japan would ever contemplate a war against us and i think that he greatly admired the regime for two reasons it seemed to be on good terms with religious leaders and it also allowed American Corporations to operate freely to the that was their definition of a free country and in that case i think that john foster saw the nazi regime as something that actually was a positive ally in the fight. I want to thank you for writing this book i think it is a story that needed to be told. I hadnt thought of him for years. What was the relationship with Jay Edgar Hoover or did they think that he was a clown because they seem to be the only to people in america that didnt have to be afraid of them. Its interesting. Both of them had relationships with joe mccarthy to be very different. He refused to about the cia officers to testify in front of the mccarthy committee, but he did. He brought in and hed to mccarthy to launch a loyalty in the state department. As for Jay Edgar Hoover in this kind of an interesting story. Hoover wanted to be the head of the cia. And as you can see in this wonderful play about Lyndon Johnson, there is an interesting moment. After he was out of office and was fading away from public life we had a terrible episode in mississippi when the civil rights workers were killed. Lyndon johnson had trouble motivating Jay Edgar Hoover to go down and investigate it because hoover didnt like doing that. Johnson had to do something to convince Jay Edgar Hoover you need to go down there and launch an operation to track down these murders to get how did he do that . He knew that Jay Edgar Hoover hated him and feared him even though he at this point was out of office so he called him and he said i want you to go down to mississippi as my personal envoy to investigate what happened to those workers and write me a report about the tension in mississippi. And if alan dulles said i dont even know the name of the governor of mississippi. He had never been involved in the civil rights issue at all. He did go to mississippi and spent two days and wrote a little report that no one ever read, but the reason he was sent there was because Lyndon Johnson wanted to stick it to Jay Edgar Hoover and worked. Of the relationship with him had been effective on the project did they protect him and see to it that he doesnt get back to much . You are referring to the economic minister and the regime and he is a figure in this book. He and alan dulles worked very well together and there were some other types of people that i admired the culture that had produced each other growth for very stark religiously shaped people, at least that is what they would describe themselves as. So they were the key link between nazi germany and the United States during the 1930s. He was brought before the tribunal and he was found not guilty, although the chief of the tribunal, Justice Robert jackson wrote in his decision that he was the chief figure that lowered the western world into collaborating with of the nazis and there was nobody to be of more successfully than John Foster Dulles. When it comes to his Decision Making with regards to the Foreign Policy we try to tease out the economic drivers from the more a logical or National Security concerns, and with regards to the folks that are the subject of your book, how did they get, how do you think they got their head a round of them acting on behalf of the former clients but also use in the government as a tool for the supported National Security concerns were to put it differently, what if they hadnt worked for sullivan and cromwell that knows how to deal with counter toward jewels but might the Decision Making have been different and also if there were no soviet union might the decisions have been different in those cases that you cited . I like the contractor was, but not having worked for them in the soviet union not having existed is too far even for me. But you actually raise what i think is an interesting question that historians of the 1950s have discussed at great length and they have been dated this question. Why did they do it . Did the overthrow of these governments in order to defend American Corporations, or did they do it because they thought those governments or security threats to the United States and leading the way towards communism . As i have reflected on this, i think there is probably less difference between those two explanations than you might think on the surface but to the extent theres a difference, i come to this conclusion. Actually, they did not overthrow the foreign governments to protect the interest of American Corporations. They did it because they felt that those governments were threats to the United States. But how did they decide that the government or threats to the United States . It is because they were bothering American Corporations. So, if the government of the country never bothers an American Corporation that really doesnt even get on to the radar screen in washington it is the effort of a government to tax or regulate or restrict the operations of an American Corporation that is the factor that allowed them to conclude that therefore the government must be working with the soviets and must be hostile to us so they overthrew the government to protect the corporations but only indirectly. The immediate reason was the believed the government or threats to the United States and those governments policies towards the Corporate Power were the proof that they used to sustain their belief. He answered a question is that one could understand that if there were some global threat to the u. S. Economic interest, that in all of these cases, we are just seeing lets say sector or even a company within a sector not even being threatened, but perceived to be threatened, and how do we make that bridge to now everybody is at risk or is it just this one company, what have you . I dont make that bridge but i will tell you how they did it. It wasnt just for example bothering the oil company or that in guatemala she was bothering the united fruit company. Something much more profound lead behind those operations. They were challenging the entire foundation on which the World Economy was based. The fundamental difference in principle of the International Commerce was that the big corporations and industrialized countries. To sell the product in the countrys far away and they have to be able to do it on the terms that they set up. If the small countries have the power to place whatever restrictions they want on the foreign corporations, the whole edifice of the entrepreneurial global capitalism begins to crumble. [applause] and i think they realized that the structure of the World Economy was going to start to unravel if it became possible for one country here and one country there to bother one company in another company. Im having trouble fitting bolivia into this. In bolivia and you have a revolution. You have the revolution that has and there is no invasion, there is no cohort of, there is where does this fit in . You founded the expert in latin america. I dont think anybody else would know that that is in my book. Let me get a little background at the same time that it was emerging in guatemala, the regime what was actually more radical was emerging in bolivia. And that came to power as a result of a Violent Movement supported by communists not in an election like guatemala. And it was a fiery speech made by the new president whose nationalizing the industry by many standards a was a more will militant regime. I think that this was the reason theres no coastline we couldnt invade to be of no country next door that would allow you to set up the bases for which you could invade bolivia. Also, i think they felt that they didnt have a group within bolivia that they could use. They found the groups in the church and in the military that became. To overthrow the government in bolivia. Bolivia suffered more than a century because they dont have a coast line. Youre absolutely right this is an interesting contrast and i will mention one other contrast to the it at the same time that they were deciding that the countries like india and egypt and indonesia that were bitter enemies that were neutralists and he was actually embracing and giving the aid to the explicitly marxist government in yugoslavia. He didnt mind. I think the difference is that like all of the members in the Foreign Policy at that time they were immersed in the diplomatic history of europe. That is what diplomacy meant to them. All the new is europe and they understood all of the permutations of the politics and if they understood where he fit in. But they knew absolutely nothing about asia or latin america or africa and they were not able to distinguish the Domestic National was some from the kremlin sponsored subversion in the rest of the world. Eisenhower comes into office in january 20f and brought six weeks later on march 5th did you cover in your book how they responded to that and what possibilities were challenges they thought that they were facing . I want to answer that by telling you that the brothers as we looked back in a cosmically in history made three huge miscalculations. The first one had to do with their relationship in the soviet union particularly after stalin died. The Prime Minister of finance loved this idea and Winston Churchill loved it. She was absolutely opposed. There should never be any contact in the soviet union because just to sit down at a table with them would suggest that they were rational creatures and a deal might be possible and once you start believing that, the entire edifice of the cold war to collapse. They try to engage the soviet leadership after he died and as far as they were concerned and they actually said this in private, the new regime and people like khrushchev are actually worse and more dangerous because they could fool the world into thinking that they are not actually ready to destroy asked. The second huge miscalculation that the dulles brothers made is the completely misunderstood the third world nationalism of what today we would call below back. They never imagined that they would have such devastating effects years, decades, generations later. They never thought that by not holding the election in 1956 they were setting off a chain of events in which a Million People including 50,000 americans would be killed or day would plunge into the decades of tyranny or send guatemalans into this river of blood in which to hundred thousand people were killed or that the condo what a defendant such hellish conflict. Their idea is a we have in operation after a week it works if everybody down there will forget it and we will move on and we will never have any other effect with some of the quotes and the recordings indicate that while richard and i forget the names of the other two gentlemen with. While it is true alan dulles was fairly wellinformed and while he became involved in quite a bit at the end as the operation started to unravel a little bit but the reason that it started to unravel is that president kennedy began to understand more about what was going on and there was pressure from the white house that made fewer aircraft available and there was the critical issue that again saw the failure of the operation there were no large forces in cuba that were going to rise and support the bay of pigs off triet she was trying to get the president to relieve that falsehood after the operations had begun, and he was consciously trying to fool the president and put him in a corner so that when the operation was failing, the president would provide that cover and the president refused to provide that cover. And i can understand why you dont want to go into this perhaps in your book. But there is a lot of literature on the subject in a way that matters. One of the best ones, but president kennedy was murdered by his own National Security because he became a peacemaker in office and the pivotal event was the bay of pigs, and alan dulles had the same kind of grudge that you mentioned him bearing in the beginning when he got around and guatemala since he was fired right after the bay of pigs and he was one of the people involved in the assassination and that is why president johnson put him in charge of the commission. Always to be in charge of the commission. Let me say first of all i have a whole chapter and actually the points that you make are correct. Was president kennedy the decided they wouldnt be 16. Was to be noisy and we would ad3 was to be noisy and we would add it somewhere else in it and then all the newspapers in the United States started publishing it after they decided it had to stay a secret otherwise it couldnt work. So i think it is true that alan dulles understood this was happening and he was totally disconnected from the planning of the operation. But there is a lot of discussion afterwards. So why did they let it go forward, knowing that all of the key conditions they had set up for success would disappear, and later on i think we found out the answer and actually it is exactly the answer that you gave. We know this operation isnt going to work but when it is failing in the last minute we will go to kennedy and say we need 25 plans. What is he going to say . He cant say no, but he did. And the reason why they believed that is because the exact same thing that happened under eisenhower during guatemala they had about half a dozen planes that they were using, pretending that they were rebels from the army and that they were actually cia plans. Three of them collapsed and suddenly there were not enough planes. He went into the white house to see eisenhower. We have to have more planes. And actually the Legal Adviser to the state department was in a meeting and said you cant do this. You are getting the government involved in something. You cant do this. And eisenhower decided in favor and he later explained, which i think is a classic explanation from a military man is that any time you choose the root of the violence or support of violence, you must carry it through to the end no matter what it takes so that was the mindset that not only did they have but that they thought the white house had. It did have that mentality during a while eisenhower was in the white house they never imagined that kennedy would say i told you we are not getting the airport involved and i actually mean that. I happened to meet some of the cubans that were descending the beaches that today while i was in helsinki in 1962. My theory is that this whole thing was many times played, starting with the way that we got the canals away from columbia where we cemented this little resolution in sight of columbia and a bunch of rebels get land of columbia. Weve come in with the marines and back them up and hinault and see the canal owned to last. Every country gets divided in half. The cuban immigrants would take a big enough chunk of land so that they could declare that as the sort of free zone and defend their freedom against castro and we have a foothold down there. A few weeks after the invasion, Richard Nixon in came into the white house to talk to kennedy and he said what would you have done and he said what you did. I would have found a way to get a little piece of land. I believe that. I feel that the brothers truly believed that the power of the United States and some kind of domestic super rational way would always triumph and this was one of the themes that moly takes you through this era of that starts before of it that started in the 20th century and a continued all the way this is about what is happening. It hasnt been a very long since the president of the United States feels that we wanted to bomb syrian but it didnt work because Many Americans were against it and many members of congress were against it. I cant remember any time in my lifetime in the United States government wanted to start a war and Many Americans were against it and then the dulles brothers were the number one promoters you never talk to your enemies and negotiate and ultimately get what you want. You dont have to negotiate you talk to the president of iran on the phone so it asks this question are we witnessing that history is being made right now is the Peace Process in 2001 and argues the government of israel has moved increasingly to the right. This even from the National Press club in washington, d. C. Is one hour and 20 minutes. [applause] dont know where to put this water, but i will need it. Thanks a lot, norman. On i think that we will soon be reporting that you attended the permits the. If thank you for hosting me here and packing this room and opening up what i think is going to be an essentials discussion. This is the lares