lol, right.

US foreign policy was greatly influenced by the Dulles brothers. JF Dulles was secretary of state for much of Eisenhower's administration. Allen was the director of the CIA from 1953-1961 (and actually functioned as it's chief before and several years after his dismissal by JFK). In fact, after all my research, if I had to point the finger at one person who got all the events of November 22, 1963 going, it would be him.

The brothers were virulently anti-communist, in fact bordering on fascists. In fact, FDR was aware of this and, when he posted him to the Switzerland OSS office (either in 1942 or 43), some of FDR's inner circle felt FDR thought that Dulles would be a useful tool to unwittingly draw out some of the top Nazis trying to escape. Of course, FDR died just a few weeks prior to the european war ending and we know from history that the infamous 'ratlines' allowed tens of thousands of nazis to escape, with Dulles' assistance (if you read any of John Loftus' books). 

In any event, JF Dulles envisioned himself as a perpetual secretary of state for GOP administrations until his health gave out in the late 1950s. Allen fancied himself as a lifetime director (ala Hoover with the FBI) of the CIA.

To this end, Allen sabotaged peace agreements and any chance of detente with Russia several times. He also had a substantial interest in United Fruit co (I'm sure you've heard of that), operating out of Central and South America, using peoples from several countries as little more than indentured servants. Dulles had a very colonial view of the world and would have been perfectly fine with 90% of the world's populace in a slave or indentured servitude situation. He was a firm believer in the CIA acting as the policeman for the wealthy.

But he didn't just focus on the Western Hemisphere. All the problems that the US finds itself with in Iran can be traced back to his undermining of Mossadegh, when Mossadegh was elected as the leader of Iran and nationalized the oil industry there. A lot of folks don't know that Mossadegh came to the US and met with Eisenhower. Being aware of the Iran Declaration coming out of the 1943 Tehran Conference, Eisenhower's first inclination was to support Mossadegh and infuse US capital to build up Iran as a US ally in the region. Dulles, with his colonial view of the world and his british business contacts, was able to persuade Eisenhower after several meetings to reverse course and support a coup, replacing Mossadegh with the Shah.

On a personal note, I had befriended an Iranian-American doctor from the 1980s on and had many discussions with him about this over games of chess, which gave me a bit of insight on how the folks of Iran viewed US foreign policy in regards to them. He felt Iran would have welcomed US as an ally then, but once the coup occurred and the Shah was installed (did I mention my uncle was a personal helicopater & small plane pilot of the Shah for some years in the mid-50s), the populace became very anti-US. The Shah was not a 'friend of the people'.

Cool, thanks for that piece of history, I think I had heard some about the Dulles now that you brought this up, but it's good to have some more cotext. Interesting about your uncle as well.

I miss playing chess, but don't think I can add that to wgw and words with friends!

Yes, unfortunate that my uncle's political views changed so drastically. As a young man, he was really a-political. After 20 years in the armed services and marrying into an ultra-conservative family, his views shifted right of Attila the Hun. In his words, "the Shah wasn't such a bad guy." He denies ever working for the CIA, but I don't know how one gets a job as a personal pilot for the Shah without them using him as atleast a cutout. I'm sure there were a lot of folks who worked for the CIA in those days without knowing it.