Part Two: How The Dulles Brothers Created The CIA And Destroyed Everything Else

Part Two of Three of our episodes on the Dulles Brothers with guest, Jason Pargin.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M hm. Hitler is a guy we're gonna be talking
about a lot today because we're talking about The Dullest
Brothers Part two, and we'll be covering their time in
the war, which involves a lot of Nazis. I'm Robert Evans.
This is you know, Behind the Bastards. You should know

(00:20):
that this is the second episode we're doing on this series.
And my guest is again Jason Targeant. Jason, how are
you doing? Do some people start with part two of
a series like this? Do we have to catch them?
Catch them up with if they are Jason, their maniacs,
and I feel no need to pay ander to them.
There's a question I did want to ask though, because
when you left off the two Dullest Brothers, and again

(00:43):
just because it's been a week or whatever, You've got
the elder brother, Foster Dulles, who is not yet going
he's going to be Secretary of State later. You've got
the younger alan Um who was later going to take
over the CIA. Right now, they're not doing that. Right now,
they are helping to basically negotiate the post war post

(01:04):
World War one piece with Germany correct and the terms
of that that will wind up the terms of the
piece of World War One set the stage for everything
that comes after, right up until today. Yes, So how
old are these brothers when that is occurring, Because they're
not They're not very old. No, I mean like twenty,

(01:29):
like like Allen. Well, yeah, in there, in there there.
So Foster is older. Foster starts um college. Well, no,
he starts high school in nineteen o four, so he's
graduated by nineteen o eight. World War One starts when
he's in his early twenties. He's in his late twenties,
and Alan is in his early twenties. I think. Okay,

(01:51):
so when you think about your early twenties, would you
have felt confident in your ability to redraw the map
of post war Europe? Done a pretty good job? I
think I could have, you know, because the the only
people who have their ship together, uh, in all of
Europe um in my opinion, my opinion Jason um is

(02:13):
probably gonna be I don't know, uh, fucking Bosnia and
I thing's ever gotten wrong there. Let's give it all
to Bosnia. Let them figure it out. I think that's
how I do it. You've got Greater Bosnia and then
you got Russia. There could be an entire There have
been entire, unsure, horrifying books written about the way that

(02:36):
the map when after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire
and everything else, like everything that's happening all the way
through al Qaeda and ISIS, and everything comes down to
in many ways, how those borders were drawn by people
who in many cases had never even visited the places
they were. And one of the most telling things in

(02:56):
the world if you want to know understand a lot
of why people in a lot of parts of the
Middle East field the way they do and why things
have gone the way they do, is the vast majority
of people in the United States and England and France
have never heard of the Psykes Pico Treaty. Every fucking
kid in Iraq, in Syria knows what Psykes Pico was. Um,

(03:19):
because it created their fucking world. Um, And it was
a treaty that you know, Sykes and Picco. I think
we're British and French guys, but um, it's um yeah,
this is this is the period that period. Well that's happening.
And I will say, you know, in fairness, redrawing the
boundaries of Europe as a result of this conflict. What

(03:41):
they're doing is not the same as what's being done
to the Ottoman Empire, because that's much more violent and horrible.
What like they had, they understand Europe a lot better. Um,
they're often negotiating with the people who are running these
countries because like they you know, they for one thing,
think that Europeans get to have more input into what

(04:01):
happens with their nations than than the people of the
Ottoman former Ottoman territories. Yeah, it's just it's a very
consequential period of world history. The same after World War One,
the whole world order kind of gets reshuffled, and I
think one of which of the Dullest brothers was dealing
with Germany's repayment of their foster foster. Like how that

(04:24):
comes down, that's gonna sow the seeds of everything, everything
that happens up until today. Like it's it's hard to
overstate how the mistakes are made at the time, and
maybe things couldn't have been anticipated. I don't know, that's
a whole separate deal. It's hard to overstate how important

(04:46):
what their work was here up through until the time.
Both of these men die. Because it is a personal
beef of mind that when we talk about politics in
America today, when we look for a historical example, we
have like two, everyone is either Hitler or uh now,
I don't know if it's everything is either four or Hitler,

(05:10):
it's yeah. And I wish I wish you could insult
the president by saying he's like Woodrow Wilson. And I
wish you could insult an administration's foreign policy by saying
it's like it's like the Dulles are in charge. To
the average person today, like arguing on the internet those names,
I guarantee you don't mean anything. They don't. And it's

(05:32):
one of the things that's fascinating about this that you're
kind of touching on is that when the most consequenceial
decisions in modern history are being made, a number of
people at the table are just some dudes, grandkids, you know,
like the dullest brothers are not the only people who
get in this position, including like the crowned heads of Europe.
You could argue, but like, how much a factor this

(05:56):
is that the people making these calls are all buddies
and relatives of each other in a lot of ways.
It's different because in America we're not supposed to have
royalty and and so. But when you but when you
look and he said, well, gosh, how are these two
guys fresh out of college or fresh out of the
first jobs? Like sitting at the table help redraw what

(06:19):
the future looks like. And it's like, oh, well, they
were having dinner with foreign leaders when they were in kindergarten. Uh.
It's there are classes of people who when you're growing up,
you have the option of saying, well, do you want
to go into your father's business to be a minister?
Do you want to be secretaries? Stay like your grandfather,

(06:40):
And that's one of the options. Uh. And you're just
traveling in a circle of people and you have as
you mentioned the previous episode, like their jobs they were
getting at the time didn't pay much at all, totally
irrelevant to this class of people. That's not what it's about.
Like they are destined to be names and history books
and so they have the money if they want to

(07:03):
spend a year in India or do whatever they did
to see these parts of the world and all these
things would influence how they see the world. They have
the ability to do that. You you didn't, you could
not have have taken off and just you know, traveled
around and all of this and failed your way upward
the way Allen did. Yeah. Um, Now, Jason, as we

(07:23):
get into this because we into the last episode, noting
that this is the period the world, the end of
World War One in which communism really gets fixed on
the dullest boys radar right. And of course it would
like it wasn't really a massive topic of discussion until
the Russian Revolution that really made it something that a
lot of American conservatives were obsessed about. Um because they see,

(07:44):
you know, you see, like the business leaders in the
crowned heads of of Russia get murdered and have their
stuff taken, and it it scares a lot of people.
But it is worth noting as we start this episode
that the hardline anti communist attitudes that were adopted by
Foster and alan a List immediately after the Russian Revolution
were not necessarily the default even among conservatives. Herbert Fucking

(08:08):
Hoover is one of the most conservative presidents in US history,
and during this period of time he urged Woodrow Wilson
to reevaluate the Bolshevik movement and acknowledge that it had
quote true social ends and roots in quote grievous injustices
to the lowest classes in all the countries that have
been affected. Hoover warned that in the United States, the

(08:30):
advancement of communist causes was directly the fault of American reactionaries,
who had stimulated Bolshevism by viciously attacking social welfare programs. Now,
if you know what anythan about Hoover, it's wild that
he's the one saying this, but he is. History has
gotten rewritten. Yeah, in terms of looking backward about and

(08:51):
and and then in the same way where it's like, well,
we always hated the Nazis, so like, well, yeah, yeah,
we're about to talk about that a lot, Jason, No,
uh yeah. So the idea that the communism is like
always antithnical to everything America. It's godless and it's there's
no freedom, and it's like, well, like Herbert Hoover was saying,

(09:11):
these guys have a point because what it replaced was
not American style. We have this thing where it's like
the whole world is either America or it's communist. It's like,
but I mean, to his credit, he is very astute.
Lee noting that one of the thing reasons these causes
are being advanced in the United States is because reactionaries

(09:32):
are refusing any kind of meaningful social welfare. Um, so
he's not entirely like that is a That is a
pretty astute observation. I would say it is a level
of nuance on the subject that America would have would
be in no mood for a few decades later. And
again from one of one of the worst presidents in
American history. The guy who who just kind of steers

(09:55):
us right into the Great Depression is staying this amazing.
Herbert so Woodrow Wilson and the Dullest Brothers did not
listen to Herbert Hoover. Between nineteen nineteen and nineteen twenty,
President Wilson deployed the U. S. Army to suppress labor
or racial unrest twenty five times. That's the Army, not
the National Guard. We don't talk about that a lot either.

(10:18):
The Dullest Brothers enthusiastically supported this. After the war, Allen
continued his diplomatic career for a while, but eventually left
to join his brother at Sullivan and Cromwell. Now by
that point, Foster Dullas had been made a full partner
in the firm, which was more powerful than ever. As
the United States grew through the nineteen twenties to become
the West's pre minute power, Sullivan and Cromwell continued to

(10:40):
do the work of weaving their corporate clients into the
very fabric of American governance. In the US, Foster Dullas
presided over the merger of a group of oil drillers
and refiners into a Moco. He worked with mining corporations
in Chile and Peru, sugar plantations in Cuba, banks in France.
He specialized in helping US utility companies take control of

(11:00):
utilities and foreign nations, generally by bribing their governments. Alan's
first post World War One posting was to the U.
S Embassy in Turkey. Now again, he is technically a
diplomat at this point, but his real job in all
these postings is to gather intelligence. He's a spy, but
at this point, again not a very good one, because
as soon as Alan sets up shop in Turkey, he

(11:21):
falls for the most obvious forgery of all time, the
Protocols of the Elders. Yes, grats that one off your
Bengo card, and then really evaluate reevaluate your life. If
you have a bingo card with the Protocols of the
Elders of Zion on it, that's maybe think about. If

(11:42):
you're a podcast listener, I'm sorry, you can't go very
many podcast episodes without running into it, either in a
good way or a very bad way. So I'm gonna
quote from The Devil's Chessboard by David Talbot here. One day,
the young American diplomat was given a copy of the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion by a British reporter

(12:03):
who had fished the scillious document out of a second
hand bookstore in Istanbul's Old European Quarter. The Protocols purported
to offer a secret plan for Jewish world domination and
included tales about Christian children being sacrificed for Passover feast
rituals and other lurid fantasies. By the time Dullus got
his hands on the book, which was the creation of
the Russian Czars anti Semitic secret police, the document had

(12:24):
been widely denounced and discredited, but Dullus took it seriously
enough to send a coded report about the secret Jewish
plot back to his superiors in Washington, so he he
sends this back to the State Department, like you guys
got to hear about this? Uh incredible spy. The authors
of who named that? How upset were they when they

(12:45):
later heard the much more badass title The Devil's Chessboard,
So much better of a should have called our thing
the Devil's Chessboard the Devil's Chessboard. It is a pretty
good book. It's actually the guy who founded Salon, which
is not a website. I like a lot, But Alan
Dullas got married in nineteen twenty to a woman named Clover,

(13:07):
who he almost immediately cheated on. It was a miserable relationship,
but they would stay together the rest of their lives.
Clover was prone to depression, while Alan barely paid attention
to her and slept around constantly. His sister Eleanor estimated
that he had more than a hundred mistresses, to the
extent that Ellen Dulas was capable of feeling bad about anything.
He seems to have felt kind of bad about this.

(13:30):
At one point he wrote to his wife and advised
her to ask her friends for advice on how to
quote live with a queer duck like me. He later
confessed in a letter, I don't feel I deserve as
good a wife as I have, as I am rather
too fond of the company of other ladies. So there's
a there's a degree of self awareness that he has
because he's he's she is miserable, like on the verge

(13:52):
sometimes of suicide, because he's he's just constantly sleeping with her,
and like he'll tell her about it, like he's not
even trying to hide it. Like he'll like brag about
his new mistresses to like their kids. Like it's he's
a weird dude, A weird dude who, like most narcissists,
I assume, could turn on the charm when he wanted

(14:13):
to and probably worked like a magic spell. Like that
is the worst type of person to be in a
relationship with when they can turn that on and then
just turn it off instantly. Now, one of the chief
problems in their union, as you were kind of getting
at Jason, was Alan's temper. He was prone to angry
rants that would provoke his wife to curl up into

(14:35):
a fetal position. When he finally stopped, she'd leave the
house and wander for hours. They were miserable together, so
perhaps it's for the best that Alan spent most of
his time traveling around the world ignoring her. Clover tried
to make the best of a bad situation by focusing
on her son and two daughters. While her husband was
an arch conservative, she became obsessed with penal reform and

(14:57):
spent a great deal of time visiting prisoners. She was
known to regularly stop for long conversations with homeless people
and impoverished men and women. In breadlines and letters to
her family, she wrote that she felt guilty for her wealth.
Alan felt no such guilt. He was known to not
even pick up napkins he dropped at dinner, leaving that
for his servants. So they're very different people. In nineteen

(15:19):
thirty one, Alan started an affair with a blonde Russian
immigrant whose husband was chronically ill. He did not try
to hide his relationship from his wife, and in fact
bragged to her and to his children about the relationship.
One of his biographers later wrote, sex, it appears was
to Alan dillis a form of physical therapy, something one
did to keep himself fit for more important things. Clover's

(15:41):
insistence on staying home with the children and her increasing
preoccupation with prisoners rights were treated by him as a
betrayal of her obligation to be his good and faithful companion.
If Clover would not travel when Alan asked, then he
could not really be blamed if he diverted himself with
other women, always of his own class and station. So
pretty cool, dude, I guess that's what I'm getting at, Jason. Yeah,

(16:02):
And if he was a narcissist, as I throughout a
wild guest in the previous episode, if you disagree, that
is fine. If he was literally everything that happens here
is totally unsurprising to you. Right. He does not conceive
of anyone else. He is the main character in the
story that is his life. Everyone else or extras and

(16:22):
he it's not that he can't have feelings or emotions,
but the fits of rage, the fact that when you
make a narcissist angry, your humanity disappears. You are just
an object. You're a receptacle for their rage. And so
whatever love he felt for someone like that, it is

(16:46):
different because he said, like, you know, I don't you know,
I don't deserve a wife is as good as her
or whatever. Again, he's still not thinking of her as
an in you know, like a separate person with agency
and the same thing with the servants and everyone else.
I personally believe this is just my opinion that his

(17:07):
whole worldview was kind of shaped by that. And the
fact that we have a system where narcissists consistently bubbled
to the top explains a lot about the way name
name a popular figure. I'm not saying that Donald Trump
was a narcissist. I again, I've not spoke to the man.
I I certainly couldnt make that determination. He kind of

(17:30):
has some uh elements of one in my opinion. Again,
if you disagree, those of you who know it all
Trump personally, I know some of your friends, you know
this has a this our our number one hot spot
for listeners is Mara Lada action. Um so. But I
think guys like this they can't fully conceive of consequences

(17:53):
to themselves or to other people, like they just everything
about the way and like the idea that the citizens
of these other countries where they're going to do the
things spoiler alert that they're going to be doing over
the next few decades, the idea that the people suffering
because of that, that those are actual human beings. I
don't think would enter the mind of someone like al adult.

(18:15):
I don't think he can really conceptualize that. No, I don't,
And that's what I was saying earlier. I think makes
him different from his brother because Foster is not the
same um I think Foster has and it evolves through
time an ideology. Well, actually he goes through a couple
of different ones. But he he acts based on things
that he believes about the world, and I think with

(18:36):
Alan it's more he acts based on things he believes
about himself or wants to have for himself. It's almost
like you have the representation of what we now think
of as like the modern conservative movement, where you have
the Bible true believers, and then like the Donald Trump
wing who's just in it for a really interesting way

(18:57):
to look at this. And so that's how you can
wind up with like a womanizer, a crazy party boy
who has the loyal devotion of the studious Bible thumpers
in the South. It's like, how do they have anything
in common? Well, look at the dullest brothers raised by
the same family at the same time in the same era,

(19:19):
two very different people that would wind up on the
same mission for in my view, totally different reasons. Yeah,
I think I think you're right on the money with that.
That is not I think a way I would have
thought to bring it up. But let's get moving. Um okay.
So Foster, by comparison to his brother, was utterly devoted

(19:41):
and as far as we know, loyal to his wife Janet.
But the brothers were similar in the fact that neither
of them did seem to give a good goddamn about
their children. David Talbot writes that Alan treated his kids
as if they were quote visitors in his house, and
they were both just they were both like complete workaholics.
You know, I think with Alan it more he really
didn't care all that much. Foster is just working all

(20:04):
the time. They're both people who their children are number one.
Then this is them being a product of their time. Right,
that's the wife's job, right. Um, you know, when they're older,
all helped them start their careers off and stuff, and
like they'll but like it's it's her job to raise them.
I have to go change the world. But neither of
them are very warm fathers, you would say. Um, Now,

(20:28):
as the Roaring twenties gave way to the Great Depression
of the early nineteen thirties. The Dullest brothers grew increasingly
concerned about the spread of Communist sympathy at home and abroad,
and Foster this ignited a deep and enthusiastic sympathy for
the Nazis, who he regarded as the best bet for
stopping communisms westward advance in Europe. While he does not

(20:48):
seem to have fallen for the protocols of the Elders
of Zion like his younger brother, Foster's Nazi sympathies led
him to some pretty vile behavior from the Devil's Chessboard quote.
In ninety two, is Hitler began his takeover of the
German government, Foster visited three Jewish friends, all prominent bankers,
in their Berlin office. The men were in a state
of extreme anxiety during the meeting. At one point, the bankers,

(21:11):
too afraid to speak, made motions to indicate a truck
parked outside and suggested that it was monitoring their conversation.
They indicated to him that they felt absolutely no freedom.
Eleanor recalled Foster's reaction to his friends terrible dilemma. Unnerved
his sister There's nothing that a person like me can
do in dealing with these men except to probably keep
away from them, he later told Eleanor They're safer if

(21:33):
I keep away from them. Actually, there was much that
a Wall Street powerbroker like John Foster Dolas could have
done for his endangered friends, starting with pulleage, pulling strings
to get their families and at least some of their
assets out of Germany before it was too late. And
I think David Talbot is right on the money here.
This is not a situation where he could have done nothing.
The Nazis were extremely happy to let very wealthy Jewish

(21:56):
people leave Europe, often with some of their assets, in
order to please For indignitary stuff like that happened. A
man with Foster's poll would have had no trouble getting
his friends out of Nazi Germany. Many other influential foreigners
did the same, and in fact Hitler himself intervened to
allow a Jewish doctor who had treated his mother's cancer
to immigrate from Germany with his assets. This was not

(22:17):
an impossible thing. Um he just didn't do it. Uh
it was I think he just got spooked. Um Or
he didn't really care all that much, one way or
the other. Now, the fact that Foster Dulas absolutely could
have saved his friends is underscored by the fact that
he was seen by the Nazis as one of their
most valuable American friends. In fact, without Foster Dullus, it

(22:39):
is possible that the Nazi military build up and the
Blitzgraig would not have happened, or certainly wouldn't have happened
in the form that it did. See and this is interesting.
Foster Dulas made his fortune building and advising cartel's. This
is what he specialized in for that big law firm.
Cartels are groups of competing businesses who agreed to fix
prices and closed their supply and distribution networks to outsiders

(23:02):
in order to maximize profits. Now, this was not then
or now a popular idea to anyone but people who
invest in cartels because it increases prices and generally reduces
the quality of products for everybody else. Foster defended cartels
as forces for stability, and he made it like his
argument that it's it protects economies from wild swings. Now,

(23:23):
one of Foster's big clients was the International Nickel Company,
which was based in the United States, Foster was both
their legal counsel and a director and member of the
executive board. In the early nineteen thirties, as the Nazis
solidified their hold on power, Foster Doles helped merge the
International Nickel Company and a Canadian affiliate into a cartel

(23:46):
with France's two major nickel producers. In nineteen thirty four,
he brought a German company in I. G. Farban, the
largest German nickel producer, into the cartel. Stephen Kinzer writes
quote this gave Nazi Germany access to the cartel's resources.
Without Dullus, According to a study of Sullivan and Cromwell,

(24:06):
Germany would have lacked any negotiating strength with International Nickel,
which controlled the world supply of nickel, a crucial ingredient
in stainless steel and armor plate. So without this cartel
and without Foster's roll in it, it's possible the Nazis
don't have access to the metal they need to make
the armor for their tanks. Which is cool. And he

(24:29):
was not unique, No, no, no, in the American business world. Again,
it's it's hard to he's not unique at this stage.
Certainly in nineteen this is two thirty four is when
he brings an Ig Farban and a lot of Americans
are working with the Nazis. Absolutely, Yeah, this is a

(24:50):
stage where in the American business, especially if you think
that you're picking between the Nazis and the Communists, there's
a lot that kind of came down on the side
of There's a lot to be discussed there about what
they knew or should have known at the time, because again,
the issues that the Jews were having in Germany, like

(25:11):
you talked to any of them, you could have found
out what was coming, and Foster had you know, and
Foster had and so the argument that they should have known, like,
I get that we're looking back at this knowing how
things turned out, and that that is not completely fair.
Like there, maybe we may be getting judged just as
harshly Hun did years from now from things that we

(25:31):
expressed support for or whatever, but for Will Wheaton mainly,
But of all the people on earth who probably could
have should have known better, I I think it's fair
to say that Foster Dellis was was one of those. Yeah,
and his his complicity will get deeper um at this

(25:52):
stage thirty four. I mean, he didn't necessarily know the Germans.
He couldn't have known they're going to use all of
this nickel to make tanks and take over a large
jump of the planet. Um, although I guess you could,
you could safely argue wasn't a huge guess if you
were reading the things that Hitler was putting out right,
because like, it's what year didn't mind come come out? Geez,

(26:13):
twenty four I think is when it was written at least, Yeah,
this is complicated territory that the exact year you're talking
about matters a lot, because a lot of people don't
immediately know, like well, Win was Poland invaded? Or when
did it? When did they find out about the Holocaust?
There is plenty of support in the thirties for Hitler
in the United States at the stage we're talking about.

(26:35):
But again, it mind comp was not dug up and
discovered later. Hitler's feelings about the Jews was not something
that came out later and and where he had to
be canceled later on it was known. Uh, it was
never okay, It's just you have to orient yourself in
time to understand what's like, how he could be so

(26:57):
callous or how he could you know, like leave those
friends behind because did he know the degree of danger
that those friends were in. Probably not, but uh I
don't know, yep, yep, yeah, and well yeah, I'm going
to continue actually with a quote from the Brothers um

(27:17):
that talks about so he one of the guys he
works with is this this guy Shocked, who is like
kind of running the economy for the Nazis in this
period quote. Working with Shocked Foster helped the not national
socialist state find rich sources of financing in the United
States for its public agencies, banks and industries. The two
men shaped complex restructuring of German loan obligations at several

(27:38):
debt conferences in Berlin, conferences that were officially among bankers
but were in fact closely guided by the American and
German governments, and came up with new formulas that made
it easier for the Germans to borrow money from American banks.
Sullivan and Cromwell floated the first American bonds issued by
the giant German steelmaker and arms manufacturer Krupp. A G

(27:58):
extended i G farban global reach, and fought successfully to
block Canada's effort to re strictly the export of steel
to German arms makers. According to one history, the firm
quote represented several provincial governments, some large industrial combines, a
number of big American companies with interest in the Reich,
and some rich individuals. By another account, it quote thrived

(28:19):
on its cartels and collusion with the new Nazi regime.
So the longer he does this, the more the deeper
he gets into, specifically helping the German state arm itself. Right,
Canada is trying to stop export of steel because they
see Germany arming Sullivan and Cromwell under Foster says, we
gotta get around that. We gotta make sure these Nazis

(28:40):
seven enough steel. Um. So his complicity deepens over time. Now,
Alan actually spent a decent amount of time with like
real ass Nazis, including the Nazis Nazi of them all.
Oh sorry, then we're talking about Allen now, not Foster. Um.
And the difference between them in this is interesting because
Alan actually meets hit and I don't think Foster does.

(29:01):
Alan sits down with a fear in nineteen thirty three.
Um that said, he was not like his brother in this.
Alan actually met with Hitler in his role as a
diplomat and a spy. He was asked to do this
by f DR and a number it's like he was like,
f DR sends Alan Dules to Europe to meet with
Hitler and a couple of other European leaders, and Alan

(29:22):
and his partner in this project they're going on. A
diplomat named Davis asked Hitler about reports of violence against
political dissidents and Jews. Hitler claims that he was just
taking action to quote protect the millions in foreign capital
that are invested in Germany. So that is interesting to
me that, like FDR, while Foster is actively working with
the Nazis to help their economy and to help their rearming,

(29:43):
Alan gets sent over to spy on them with FDR,
and Alan asks them directly about all of the horrible
Nazis ship they're doing, and Hitler says, all we're arresting
these people, were putting them in camps to protect foreign
capital that's invested in Germany. And it's obviously that's not
entirely why he was doing it, but I think it's
interesting that that's the line of argument he picks with
the Americans. And you can see why you think it

(30:05):
would work, because there's guys like Foster now Alan Dulis
at this stage didn't see anything unsettling about the Nazis. However,
he returned to Berlin two years later in nineteen thirty five,
and could not ignore the brutality of the regime. He
reported back that Nazi Germany had left him with a
quote sinister impression. Stephen Kinser calls Nazism quote the first

(30:27):
and only important subject on which the Dulles brothers seriously disagreed.
That said, Alan's main issue with the Nazis was not
their oppression of minorities or their murder of political rivals.
It was that he was smart enough to guess where
the whole fashionson thing was heading, and he knew that
he was pretty sure that the US is gonna wind
up at war with Nazi Germany. He wanted to spare
Sullivan and Cromwell the shame of being associated with the

(30:50):
regime once war broke out. That's really interesting to me that,
like of the two guys, Foster, who is driven by
a moral code, gets really deep in with the Nazis,
and Allan pretty quickly it's like, oh, these fuckers are
bad news, and it may just be self preservation. You know,
and Alan helped some German Jews out of Nazi Germany?

(31:12):
Did he not? There's a yeah, I think there's we'll
talk about what he did because it's complicated, Jason, This
is all complicated at the stage because obviously neither one
of the brothers were like, oh, yeah, we'll be fine
with if several years from now Hitler is trying to
you know, bomb the you know, England off the map.
Like no one wants a world war in Europe. It's

(31:35):
just that if it sounds like I'm not going far
enough and criticizing the people friendly to the Nazis, it's
because I feel like it would be very easy decades
from now to look back and say, well, why was
the United States so buddy buddy with China? And you
can see that with every modern genocide, and there's always

(31:57):
financial interests who often are willing to keep profiting from
the regime that's doing the genocide. You know, Um, it's
not it's more normal than not for for people to
go along with terrible things if they're not that closely
tied to them, because the alternative is rocking the boat. Um.

(32:18):
But I think what we're talking about, Foster here is
very different um because he really like his brother Alan.
After thirty five is like, these guys are bad news.
You know, you can argue Alan actually did have some
sort of a moral compass and he was just like,
this is a step too far, or you can say
it was just self preservation. But he's pretty consistent after
thirty five, these guys are a problem, and we need

(32:39):
to be cut ties with them, we need to not
be in business with them. What is fosterest position, then,
is he's just so scared of the Communists by something else.
I think he likes them to some extent. I don't
think he's a Nazi, because I don't get any hint
that he's like super an anti Semitism or whatever. I
don't think that he wants the United States, but he's

(33:01):
he refuses to turn his back on them, and in
fact he became their most enthusiastic cheerleader in the halls
of American power. He repeatedly pushed back against arguments by
other members of his law firms, some of whom were Jewish,
that they should reduce or end their dealings with the
Third Reich. From nineteen thirty three, on all letters written

(33:21):
from the German offices of Sullivan and Cromwell ended with
Heil Hitler. Now this was required by law, but it
was not something Foster had any problem with. While Alan
politely uh disagreed with his brother, their sister Eleanor was
much more outspoken on the matter. She too traveled to
Nazi Germany and the horrors of the regime were not

(33:41):
lost on her. She repeatedly begged Foster to stop doing
business with Hitler. He ignored her, complaining that she was
working herself up over nothing. When f DR denounced the
repressive measures of the Nazi government, Foster Dullus denounced f
DR as a demagogue trying to drum up mass emotionalism.
One contemporary claimed that most of Foster's political energy in

(34:05):
the nineteen thirties went towards quote rationalizing this Hitler movement.
So he is not just kind of not wanting to
rock the boat at a time in which it starts
to be politically acceptable in common to to to go
against the Nazis. He's really still on their side. And
even his brother is like, dude, this ain't it, you know? Um.

(34:30):
In the summer of nineteen thirty five, partners of Sullivan
and Cromwell hold a vote to determine whether or not
they should cease representing German clients. The crimes of the
Nazi Nazi regime had become too blatant and numerous for
Foster's colleagues again, at least one of whom was Jewish
to ignore. Foster complained that pulling out would harm the
firm's prestige. His brother Alan argued that staying was unconscionable.

(34:53):
In the end, everyone but Foster voted to suspend the
firm's operations in Nazi Germany. There are some account that
Foster wept after the vote, Like as soon as his
partners like say we're pulling out, he just like breaks down.
You know, who won't partner with the Nazi regime the
products and services? Let's support this podcast. Oh we're back.

(35:23):
We're back, and we're still talking about Nazis um and
namely how Foster Dolus deals with him. So in in
kind of late Ish nineteen thirty five, his firm votes
to stop doing business with the Nazis, he cries and
I'm gonna quote from the brothers about what happens next.
Later he backdated the announcement the announcement that they cut

(35:43):
their ties with the Nazis by a year to make
it appear that the firm had closed its German offices
in nineteen thirty four rather than thirty five. He and Janet, however,
continued to visit Germany as the Nazi regime tightened its
grip on power, making trips in nineteen thirty six, nineteen seven,
and nineteen thirty nine. Apparently nothing he saw disturbed him.
He supported the Neutralist America First Committee, Sullivan and Cromwell

(36:07):
drew up its articles of incorporation without charge and roused
its members with speeches denouncing Churchill, Roosevelt, and other warmongers.
Hitler impressed him as quote one who, from humble beginnings
and despite the handcap handicap of an alien nationality, had
attained the unquestioned leadership of a great nation. Only hysteria
entertains the idea that Germany, Italy or Japan contemplates war

(36:30):
among upon us, he assured businessmen at the Economic Club
of New York on March twenty ninety nine. So he's
pretty pretty pot committed Jason. Yeah. Yeah, And this is
a point where there was plenty of evidence. There was
a long that you if you have lived in America
for five minutes, people have a way of getting dug

(36:55):
into their positions and to how you can go from well,
I don't support war all the way to well, you know,
Hitler is actually a great leader. It's the way we are.
It's uh, you know, I don't know. I feel like
you can get dragged down a path of someone who

(37:16):
thinks that like they're standing up for righteousness or they
just don't want war. But there's a difference between look,
you know, someone like Hitler needs to be contained, but
that a world war will kill tens of millions versus
you know, Hitler is actually the hero and all this,
which is where it felt like he landed somehow. Yeah,

(37:36):
that's that's definitely kind of the side of this that
he's on. When the Nazis invaded Poland a few months later,
Foster remained committed to the defending the regime. He gave
a public speech where he attacked Britain for declaring war
against Germany and reiterated his belief that there was no
reason for the United States to get involved. Foster published

(37:57):
an open letter where he begged for a change in
the quote international status quo to prevent powerful forces emotionally
committed to exaggerated and drastic change. This was interpreted by
his brother Alan to be a plea for the West
to embrace Nazism in order to fight communism. We've already
established that Alan was something very close to it. You know,

(38:18):
narcissis associate had. There's some stuff going on there. You
could argue if you were as irresponsible as Jason and
I am. Um, and we are, and this is our podcast.
What are you gonna do about it? You gonna come
in here and tell us we're wrong. You're not, But
Um Alan was actually despite whatever moral failings he has,
Alan was outraged with his brother's behavior at this point,

(38:39):
and he tried to appeal to his brother's religion, asking
how can you call yourself a Christian and ignore what
is happening in Germany? It is terrible? So this is
and this is really interesting to me because Foster is
up to this point much more sympathetic than Alan. But
Alan does a monster is being like what is wrong

(38:59):
with you? Like? Why are you still defending the Nazis
so much? Um, It's a very strange thing. It doesn't
go the way you would expect it to go. Yeah.
But and also there is some kind of a happy
ending of this because again John Foster Doulas standing up
for the Nazis even after they invaded Poland, he was
not canceled too hard for his pro hitler, so he

(39:20):
he was able to come back from that, uh, that
embarrassing period of his life. That gaff. Now, if Twitter
had existed, he would have gotten canceled, Jason. That's that's
what protects us now from similar disasters. So Foster DoLS
visited Nazi Germany for the last time, and I think
night um. He seems to have grudgingly accepted by this

(39:44):
point that the Nazis were not a group he wanted
to be super publicly associated with, although again he would
continue to defend them for a couple of years. Later
in the year he decided to run for Congress. His
main platform was attacking the New Deal, complaining that instead
of launched in new social programs, Roosevelt should fight the
depression by cutting government spending. He accused FDR of quote

(40:06):
attempting to stir up class feeling by trying to regulate
the securities market. Foster's campaign went nowhere. He was a terrible,
terrible politic, while terrible at getting elected Um, but it
helped establish him as a political voice within the Republican Party.
By the late nineteen thirties, both Dullis brothers were working
for Sullivan and Cromwell, which, despite dropping Germany had you know,

(40:28):
continue to be the largest law firm in the United States.
Historian Peter Gross argues that even calling it a law
firm is reductive to the point of inaccuracy. He saw
it as quote a strategic nexus of international finance, the
operating core of a web of relationships that constituted power.
The firm did offer legal associates to draft contracts, preserve estates,

(40:48):
and arguing courtrooms, but this was not the profession of
law as practiced by Foster and Alan Dulls. Their Sullivan
and Cromwell sought nothing less than to shape the affairs
of all the world for the benefit and well being
of the elect their clients. It's a fascinating organization, Sullivan
and Cromwell. UM, and I wonder how many listeners of

(41:08):
yours have ever heard the name of that firm. Before today,
I had only heard them mentioned and mentioned them in
this show during like the Panama episodes. But even then
I didn't know this. I just knew that that was
like the lawyer who kind of I just you know,
had an angle in Panama. Yeah, it's a kid maybe
something that ought to be in a textbook somewhere for kids. Maybe.

(41:32):
But I think even now we still think of the
world as a series of competing countries, and that's so reductive,
like that hasn't been true in a long time. Corporations
span borders, and their interest span borders, and it's it's
hard to understand that you can have two countries at

(41:56):
war with each other but the same corporation doing business
and both trying to arrange for things to follow a
certain way. You don't fully understand history until you understand
that element of it and the stuff we're gonna get
into about going to war on behalf of fruit companies. Again,
that it's you talk about like the phrase banana republic,

(42:17):
and that's where that comes from. Right. Um, even now,
I think the average person has a completely incorrect mental
picture because how a law firm could have that big
of a role in shaping the world seems again like
the stuff of conspiracy theories. But it's really understanding that

(42:40):
the movement of capital and what why that matters, and
that how that influences the decisions that politicians make. That's
not conspiracy stuff. That's the way the world functions now
in a global economy, and you have to almost think
of it in terms of like the these alliances are

(43:00):
less important in many cases than the corporations that span
the borders and what they're what they're trying to accomplish,
and especially you come down to things like workers advocating
for certain rights in certain countries and things like that.
That's going to play into everything that's about to happen. Yep, yeah,
it sure is, it sure is, Jason. Not in a

(43:22):
good way. No, not, Nothing that happens on this show
is in a good way. As a general rule. That's
that's behind the Bastard's Guarantee. When one of your main
sources is called the Devil's chessboard, you're you're in for
an upbeat episode. Good times for everybody. Oh lord, oh Jason.

(43:46):
So yeah, And in this idea, the fact that Sullivan
and Cromwell should shape the affairs of the world for
the benefit of their clients. This was something the Dullis
brothers agreed with right. They may have had a little
bit of a debate over whether or not Zism was okay,
but they were on board for this um. Now. During
World War One, both brothers had kind of fully fallen

(44:07):
under this way of will. The Wilson i um concept
that's known as liberal internationalism, and the basic idea behind
liberal internationalism is that international conflict arises only from misunderstandings
between ruling elites, social injustices, political oppression, religious and ethnic strife.
This all is a distraction from the real issue, which

(44:29):
is people in charge of different countries not getting along.
Since international conflict is just conflict between elites, then commerce
is the ultimate way to guarantee peace. Right. That's how
it feeds back into their ideas of capitalism, because you
guarantee peace by ensuring the international movement of corporations like
basically and and of financial interests. It's and this is

(44:51):
a pretty common idea, right that if you have a
two nations with McDonald's and them have never gone to war,
you know, stuff like that. I think we we've all
heard like versions of this idea. Um. Now, internationalists like
the Dullus brothers felt that the United States had a
duty to embrace its destiny as the world's great power.
American value should be spread through the world, across the

(45:13):
world through the engine of American business. The state's main
role then is to use its power, and particularly it's
armed might, in order to promote and defend American business
interests abroad. Foster Dullus had spent most of his life
even prior to World War One, doing this job. Alan
Dullas came to embrace his role as defender of the

(45:34):
wealthy and powerful in the post war years. One historian
wrote that he quote never bothered to understand the technical
aspects of financial maneuverings, but under the influence of Foster
in the firm, he grew sensitive to the elites goal
of transnational power to generate prosperity for the world and
of course themselves. Now, Foster and Alan were some of

(45:54):
the founding members of the Council on Foreign Relations. This
is something they helped to create. The CFR was established
in the early nineteen twenties. And this is something you
see in conspiracy theories all the time. The CFR is
in a billion different conspiracy theories. Um for good reason,
I mean sometimes for good reason, often for nonsense. Reasons

(46:14):
uh now. The CFR was established in the early twenties
with the goal of bringing powerful people together to further
the ends of American corporate and political power. The club
was invitation only, and membership became highly desired, both for
prestige and because it de facto put you in a
room with the wealthiest and most influential people on earth.
The club's motto was a single Latin word, ubiquay, which

(46:35):
means everywhere. So again, not hard to see why there's
so many conspiracies about this group. And I think their
logo was like an octopus strangling the globe. Possibly, yes,
it is an octopus murdering children, um is the logo,
and drinking their blood which is rich in a dren
of chrome um. Jesus, Like did these people don't even?

(46:58):
Did you? Do you not listen to yourselves? Is the
question I would like to ask them, Like, look at
what you how how could how would you expect people
not to start turning out conspiracy theories about this ship?
When you when you say ship like that? Anyway? As
World War Two drew nearer, Foster devoted himself increasingly to
writing articles for foreign affairs. The New Republic and the Atlantic,

(47:20):
establishing a reputation as a sagacious foreign policy expert. Allen
meanwhile found himself drifting away from legal pursuits and towards
another special club called the Room. The Room was made
up of thirties year old bankers are thirty Ish bankers, businessmen,
and corporate lawyers with deep contacts and foreign capitals. Most
of them were like Alan, men with intelligence and espionage

(47:43):
backgrounds from the last war. Now the head of this
little club, the Room, was a guy named William Donovan. Now,
Donovan was a war hero slash corporate lawyer with an
interest in the burgeoning field of intelligence. Donovan and Alan
Dulles advised FDR on overt operations abroad in the pre
World War two years, and they used their connections to

(48:05):
arrange corporate cover for American agents headed into Nazi Europe
or the Soviet Union. When the war broke out for
the United States, the Room morphed rather naturally into the OSS,
the Office of Strategic Services. This was the chief US
spy agency of World War Two and the direct predecessor
of the CIA. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

(48:27):
As the war drew nearer, Bill Donovan and a few
other far sighted men saw that the United States was
going to need an intelligence agency. In nineteen forty the
U s had basically no intelligence set up. What had
existed during World War One had basically been tossed into
the trash been In the intervening years, eight different government agencies,
including the FCC, gathered foreign intel in one form or another,

(48:48):
but none of them had any idea what the others
were doing. There was no Internet agency communication. Most of
what the White House knew about the foreign about foreign
countries internal affairs came from guys like Donovan, who the
President personally and traveled around doing his you know, spy
work on their own. So in the US entered the
war in nineteen forty one, the OSS was established to

(49:09):
formalize these very ad hoc intelligence networks. Alan Dullas joined
the OSS, and once again he was sent to Burn
for the duration of the war to get what intel
he could on Nazi occupied Europe, and again he wasn't
great at his job. Donovan's aids regularly complained about the
low quality of the intelligence coming out of Burn. In
nineteen forty four, Alan was responsible for two hilariously inaccurate predictions,

(49:33):
both based on bad intel. Prior to the Normandy landings,
he told his superiors that the Nazi regime was quote
near collapse and that the Allies would just haven't thus
have an easy time in France on D Day, which
I don't know if you've watched the documentary Saving Private Ryan,
but we did not. There were some bad days after
the invasion. Now, Alan Dullas was a very prominent figure

(49:57):
by the time the os S sent him to Burn,
and every German a in the country knew why he
was there as soon it was like publicized that he'd
arrived and that he was a spy. His guys as
a spy then did not fool anybody. Nobody got tricked
into thinking he was really a diplomat. By some accounts,
the main reason he was put in that position in
Burn at all was because his presence would draw out Nazis,

(50:18):
and while Allen was in Burn, he didn't just spy
on Nazis, he worked alongside them. See. One of Alan's
buddies during this period was a guy named Thomas McKittrick,
president of the Bank of International Sediments Settlements. The b
i S was one of the shadiest banks in history.
Although nominally Swiss, by nineteen forty the b I S
was controlled by the Nazi regime. Five of its directors

(50:40):
would later be charged with war crimes incurred, including Hermann Schmitz,
who was also the CEO of I G. Farban, the
chemical conglomerate that manufactured zekelon b. Schmitz, by the way,
was also a client of Sullivan and Cromwell fun now
tied together. All this is so the b I S
became a critical partner to the Nazi regime, laundering hundreds

(51:04):
of millions of dollars in Nazi gold that had been
looted from occupied countries. Some of this gold had literally
been ripped out of the bodies of concentration camp inmates.
When Dulas and McKittrick started talking, one of Allen's goals
was to get information about the Nazi regime from McKittrick,
which is reasonable, But when he and McKittrick got to talking,
they discovered a point of common interest. They both had

(51:25):
friends and clients with assets in Nazi Germany, and they
wanted to protect those assets. Now FDR and his people
were aware of what Allan Doulas was getting up to,
and they tried to stop McKittrick. Treasury Secretary Henry morganthal Jr.
Hated the man and pushed the administration to block b
i S funds from being used in the United States.

(51:45):
McKittrick hired Foster Doulas to be his lawyer, and Foster
was able to reverse Morgan Thou's order. In nineteen forty three,
McKittrick even traveled to the United States for a banquet
in his honor, hosted by executives from General Motors, Standard Oil,
and other companies that had profited from aiding the Nazi
war effort and were grateful that McKittrick had gotten their

(52:06):
money out of the country. Now, as World War Two
drew to a close, McKittrick and Allan Dulas would collaborate
on their shadiest venture yet from the Devil's Chessboard quote.
In the final months of the conflict, the men collaborated
against a Roosevelt operation called Project safe Haven that sought
to track down and confiscate Nazi assets that were stashed
in neutral countries. Administration officials feared that by hiding their

(52:29):
ill gotten wealth, members of the German elite planned to
bide their time after the war and would then try
to regain power. Morgan Thaous Treasury Department team, which spearheaded
Projects safe Haven, reached out to the OSS and b
I s for assistance, but Dullas and McKittrick were more
inclined to protect their client's interests. Moreover, like many in
the upper echelons of US finance and National security, Dullas

(52:52):
believed that a good number of these powerful German figures
should be returned to post war power to ensure that
Germany would be a strong bulwark against the Soviet Union,
and working with McKittrick, Alan Dulas was hugely successful installing
Projects safe Haven and ensuring that many surviving Nazi collaborators
escaped the war with their fortunes intact. But you know

(53:14):
who didn't escape the war their fortunes intact? The products
and services here's here's some fucking ads. You know what
we're doing here. So we're back and we're talking about
how Alan Dulas helped get Nazi money out of Europe

(53:34):
and helped Nazi collaborators escaped the war with their all
their money. So Foster was also involved in the protecting
Nazi fortunes game, working from New York. He used the
kind of corporate bullshit math people like him are great
at to hide the US assets of I. G. Farban
Merk and other German cartels that legally should have been
confiscated by the federal government. David Talbot writes, quote, some

(53:57):
of Foster's legal origami allowed the Nazi regime to create
bottlenecks in the production of essential war materials such as
dies diesel fuel injection motors that the US military needed
for trucks, submarines, and airplanes. By the end of the war,
many of Foster's clients were under investigation by the Justice
Department's Anti Trust Division, and Foster himself was under scrutiny
for collaboration with the enemy. But Foster's brother was guarding

(54:20):
his back from his frontline position in Europe. Allen was
well placed to destroy incriminating evidence and to block any
investigations that threatened the two brothers and their law firm.
Shredding of captured Nazi records was the favorite tactic of
Dullus and his associates, who stayed behind to help run
the occupation of post war Germany. Observed Nazi hunter John Loftus,
who poured through numerous war documents related to the Dullus

(54:42):
brothers when he served as US Prosecutor in the Justice
Department under President Jimmy Carter. So pretty cool brothers all
all together. It's hard to overstate that the fact that
even before, for people that are not World War two
history bus, the fear of the Soviet Union and the

(55:03):
beginning of the Cold War started before World War Two
was over. We're not going to get off into the
use of the atomic bomb, and how part of that
had to do with positioning with jockey for position with
the Soviets, and everyone knew what was coming next, or
at least the people who pulled the strings of Howard

(55:23):
knew what was coming next, that you were going to
transition neatly from this war right into possibly Okay, when
we set up the Manhattan Project, we didn't set up
a project to build two bombs. We set up to
build a whole bunch of them, because even though we
knew it wasn't gonna take a whole bunch to defeat

(55:45):
Nazi Germany, those were being built for whatever was coming
with the Soviets. So the fact that they so quickly
pivoted from okay, we've beaten the Nazis. Now we need
to protect what of her business interests against the whatever
is coming from the threat of communism, which is going

(56:05):
to inform these guys entire worldview right of the next
couple of decades that they're alive. That happened immediately, like
as the World War Two was winding down, the people
who would be the Cold warriors were already kind of
getting into position. Yeah, and that's a big part of
what's happening here now. The death of Franklin delan Or

(56:28):
Roosevelt immediately prior to the end of World War Two
was hugely fortunate for the Dullest brothers. David Talbot argues
that had FDR survived the war, they probably would have
faced criminal charges. Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, who served
with Allan in the OSS, later claimed that both brothers
were guilty of treason during World War Two, and again,

(56:48):
Supreme Court Justice, you know, like not not, this is
not a fringe attitude that these guys committed treason during
the war. Um, but of course they were not punished.
When the war ended. Alan stayed on with the OSS.
His first two jobs were to gather evidence that could
be used in the Nuremberg War crimes trials, and his

(57:08):
other job was to bring Nazi spy master Reinhard Galen
into the OSS to help them spy on the Soviets.
So his jobs are both find evidence about these Nazi
war criminals who we can prosecute them, and you know
this guy who ran the Nazi secret police, hire him,
not again, not the only Nazi who's going to be
getting by. It was a whole it was a whole thing,

(57:33):
whole Well, if you know American history, the line between
behavior that will get you executed for treason and that
will get you put in charge of the country is
surprisingly blurry. Yeah, it's it really is on which side
of that line you can land on any given moment.
Uh yeah, And it's some speaking of other Nazis, there's

(57:55):
a TV show out now called for All Mankind that's
like an un alternate history of like what if the
so it has gotten to the moon first? And it
kind of reimagines the space race, you know, and how
it would have changed as a result of that. Um.
One of the guys, a real guy who was probably
the single man most responsible for the U S rocket
program was Werner von Brown, who built the Nazi V

(58:15):
two rockets. UM. And there's a couple of really good
scenes with Von Brown in the show, UM that I
actually think, do a do do? Do him do justice
to what he did? But yeah, you're right, Jason, this
is a ton of guys that they do this with. UM.
But it's interesting to me that Alan's job is both
to find evidence about Nazi war crimes and to hire

(58:35):
a Nazi spy master. UM. And we'll talk about Reinhard
Galen a little more in the next episode. UM. So
Allen worked on these tasks until September, when President Harry
Truman signed in order abolishing the OSS. During the war,
the agency had accumulated a number of secret powers that
were seen as necessary for the survival of the nation.

(58:57):
Truman was worried that these powers in peacetime might be
a threat to American democracy. He transferred the OSS research
Unit to the State Department and its espionage units to
the War Department. Alan, Dulis and most of his fellow spooks, though,
found themselves out of a job. The years immediately following
World War Two were rough ones for Alan and Foster.

(59:18):
Allen was particularly unhappy with peace and spent his free
time writing letters to old Oss comrades and saying things like,
most of my time is spent reliving those exciting days.
So he's actually kind of depressed after World War Two
because he doesn't get to be a fun spy anymore.
Foster does better in the post war years. He expands
his reputation as a public intellectual. During the war, he

(59:39):
had been overcome by a new flowering of his Christian faith,
which led him to preach tolerance and forgiveness and urge
peace between the warring powers. But starting in late nineteen five,
he changed rapidly in the direction of a hawk. The
cause was, of course, the U. S. S R. From
the Brothers quote. In a series of articles for Life,
he painted a steadily more frightening pa sure of the

(01:00:00):
Soviet threat. His first major volley was a two part
series published in June ninety six entitled Thoughts on Soviet
Conduct and What to Do About It. In it, he
set the urgent tone that defined how he um, the
Republican and Democratic parties, and most Americans would view the
world for a generation. Soviet leaders, Foster wrote, had launched
a worldwide campaign that aimed to subjugate the West, to quote,

(01:00:24):
eliminate what are to us the essentials of a free society,
and to impose on conquered people's a system repugnant to
our ideals of humanity and fair play. Already, he asserted,
the Soviets had built a shadowy network of allies and
non communist countries who pretended to be patriots but in
reality take much guidance from Moscow. This made Soviet Communism

(01:00:45):
the unseen force directing nationalist movements in Asia, Africa and
Latin America. Never in history have a few men in
a single country achieved such worldwide influence, he concluded, And
here we go. This is a huge part of what
the John Birch society becomes. Right, And he's not a
fringe figure. The Birches are. He's not everything about that

(01:01:07):
we kind of take for granted about the way to
this day we talk about the world will eventually be
either all communist or it will be all America. It
will all be America. There will there will either be
Chick fil A restaurants in every country in the world,
or else we will all fall to China. But the

(01:01:27):
the the idea that the world will eventually be all
one thing or all the other. This is where it starts,
and once that idea takes hold, to this day we
still live under that. When you know, when nine eleven happened,
there was no thought of attacking that as this is
a single terrorist group and these people need to be

(01:01:49):
arrested and rooted out. It's no this is worldwide Islam,
that we must fight a war everywhere because the whole
world will either be under the umbrella of al Qaeda,
or else the whole world will be under the umbrella
of American Christianity and capitalism. And there is like this
idea that it's everywhere, the enemy is everywhere, and the

(01:02:13):
we must therefore also be everywhere. We must have spies everywhere,
we must have bases everywhere. This, in my view, is
where it starts. It's so important to note that, Jason,
because that didn't used to be how conflict work, right,
They didn't. It didn't. It's you like, it didn't always

(01:02:33):
have to be like, Okay, well, this group of people
has attacked us, which means we're now in an existential
struggle for the future of the entire human race. Um.
But that's the only place the rhetoric goes now, Like
instantly now down to the point where like people are
there are people who will talk that way about like
fucking cancel culture right that it's like the start of
this slide into a totalitarian healthscape, because that's that's just

(01:02:57):
where once you raise the rhetoric to that level, it's
it's I mean, for one thing, it's unprofitable to have
it be anywhere lower, right, You're just not going to
get people interested, and then you don't make that sweet
sub stack money. Are you gonna get on substack? Jason,
I don't. I don't know. It's I've heard it will
come down to how it's CMS is set up. Is

(01:03:20):
it easy to use? I don't know, but yeah, I'm
thinking about it. I think I think, I think I could.
I could just take a Glenn Greenwald turn um do
pretty well on that. You have to get canceled first,
and then you have to make getting canceled your entire personality.
There are people who have tried to cancel me because

(01:03:41):
there's certain I'm a CIA asset um, which is why
I'm doing this episode to provide good pr for my employers.
Good stuff. So Foster's writing was influential and formed a
major part of the glow growing belief among US leaders
that the Soviet Union was hell bent on world domination.

(01:04:01):
Despite his antipathy to the Dulles brothers, Truman embraced this idea.
In seven he spoke before a joint session of Congress
and declared totalitarian regimes imposed on free people's by direct
or indirect aggression undermine the foundations of international peace and
hence the security of the United States. He asked Congress
for four hundred million dollars in military aid to give

(01:04:21):
to nations with growing communist movements in order to suppress them. Obviously,
this marked the start of the Truman doctrine and what
many historians will name as the opening salvo of the
Cold War. Now, while Foster was beating the drums of
conflict with the U S. S R. Alan and his
old OSS buddies were tramping around Washington talking to any
elected leader who would listen about the pressing need for

(01:04:43):
a peacetime intelligence agency. The United States had never had
anything like that, but Dullis and his friends went further,
insisting that this new agency should have secret powers greater
than even the OSS had enjoyed. This new agency would
be different from anything that had insisted before then. Now,
at the time, the standard among national intelligence agencies was

(01:05:04):
that you kept intelligence gathering separate from analysis and action.
So one group of people gets the information, another group
of people decides what to do about it and actually
acts based on it. Right, a kind of a separation
of powers, so you don't have an all powerful organization
gathering information and overthrowing governments of its own accord um,

(01:05:24):
you know. Not a bad idea, Uh again, Yeah, it
was one of the reasons people didn't want these things
to be tied, as they thought it would lead to
a situation where operatives gathering information would bias the information
they gathered towards whatever actions they already wanted to take.
During World War Two, the OSS had ignored this traditional

(01:05:45):
dividing line and justified it because they were you know,
it was World War Two. The situation was extreme. We
gotta do what we gotta do. Dullis and their fellows, though,
wanted this new agency Truman was establishing to retain this
power in peace time. Now, after disbanding the OSS, President
Truman had formed an organization called the Central Intelligence Group

(01:06:05):
to advise him to advise him on intelligence matters. It
had no authority to carry out operations. It was just
about keeping the president informed. Alan Basically, Alan Dolis decides, Okay,
we've got this thing, the c i G. Maybe the
way to get what I want to establish a new
OSS is to expand what the c i G can do.
Because Truman's already willing to make the c i G

(01:06:27):
B a thing, I could just gradually push it to
have more and more power. In nineteen forty six, Republicans
won big and congressional elections. This gave the old OSS
men like Alan the leverage they needed. In nine seven,
they succeeded in pushing a bill through Congress that established
a National Security Council to advise the president on foreign
policy and a Central Intelligence Agency to gather intel and

(01:06:51):
act on it. That's what the c i G became.
According to one write up of the deliberations behind this bill,
collected by Stephen Kinzer, quote, there were strong objections to
having a single agency with the authority to both collect
secret intelligence and to process and evaluate it for the president.
The objections were overruled, and the CIA became a unique
organization among Western intelligence services, which uniformly keep their secret

(01:07:14):
operations separate from their overall intelligence activities. Now, the National
Security Act also contained a key clause which was worded
vaguely enough to give the new agency a frightening amount
of leeway. The CIA was authorized to carry out not
only duties explicitly spelled out by the law, but also
quote such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting

(01:07:38):
the national security as the National Security Council made from
time to time direct This technically meant that the agency
could take any action anywhere on Earth with the President's approval.
And they did, and they share did Uh. And we're

(01:07:58):
gonna talk about that Jason in part three, But for now,
we're going to talk about you. Yes, my most recent
book is called Zoe Punches the Future and the Dick. Uh.
If you're dissuaded by that title or by my personality,
read the read or reviews. Okay, all very good, They're

(01:08:18):
all good, or just pretend it's called Weathering Heights. Yeah,
that's actually my fifth novel. I've got a bunch out there. Uh.
The online booksellers make it very easy to find them
because they'll all be gathered together. Otherwise, I'm on all
of the social media platforms Just google my name. It's
they'll come up. Yeah, google Jason's name, find him, find

(01:08:43):
his books, find him. You know, be your own. See
I be the CIA you want to see in the world.
Eight