I took the train to Washington to meet with Allan Dulles, the longest-serving director of the CIA. Born in 1893, he served briefly as counselor to the U.S. delegation in Peking and then joined the New York law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, of which his brother, John Foster Dulles, was a senior partner. He then joined the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, where as a master spy he helped arrange the surrender of German forces in Italy in World War II. After the CIA was established in 1951, he served as deputy director, and in 1953 he was appointed director by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The interview took place on the shaded porch of his home on Georgetown’s Q Street. While his wife, Clover, served us a leisurely tea, he told me about his career in intelligence prior to being appointed a member of the Warren Commission.
He recalled that at the very outset, in January 1964, an emergency meeting was called. Rankin had reported there was information that Oswald was a paid FBI informer. “I knew it was bunk from the start,” he said. “J. Edgar Hoover and I know that he would never employ anyone like Oswald. He was too unstable.”
Dulles was proven correct when Lonny Hudkins, the reporter who had originated the rumor, admitted it was baseless.
Dulles said that it was part of the commission’s job to discredit such rumors because they injured American credibility in the world.
I asked him whether the CIA would have conducted the investigation differently.
He said with a smile, “In the CIA, we usually have a greater problem with verification. In the Warren Commission, most witnesses were ordinary people.” He then added cryptically that there was one defector who might have helped, if the CIA had been handling the case.
The interview, which lasted almost two hours, was to be my last interview. I had a thesis to write.