headquarters within earshot of his aides.

Pointing to how standards for public officials have evolved, one 1958 dalliance, with Queen Frederika of Greece, was carried out in Allen’s own office at C.I.A. Dulles maintained many of his flings without even bothering to hide them, as Stephen Kinzer documents in his new book, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles and Their Secret World War. director in 2012 over one extramarital affair, with his biographer. David Petraeus, for example, resigned as C.I.A. He carried out some of his liaisons while he was the preeminent spymaster of the United States, overseeing operations including the overthrow of leaders in Guatemala and Iran, secret wars in Indonesia and Tibet and the spectacularly botched invasion of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs in 1961.

The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World WarĪt a time when so many viewers are captivated or repelled by Mad Men’s portrayal of the lascivious, liquor-drenched behavior which characterized Madison Avenue decades ago, one remarkable true story in the United States during the Cold War trumps that fictional depiction: Don Draper’s behavior seems genteel compared with that of the man who ran the Central Intelligence Agency during its frenetic expansion into one of the largest espionage enterprises assembled by any nation in history.Īllen Welsh Dulles, the C.I.A.’s longest-serving director, (from 1953 to 1961), had affairs which numbered well into the dozens despite being married to the same woman for most of his adult life.

The brothers john foster dulles