Doomed to Fail - Ep 258: The Dulles Brothers - John Foster & Allen

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

You've heard their names, but what did the Dulles brothers actually do? Today we will ;tldr their extraordinary resume that spans from World War I to Vietnam. Both the Secretary of State and the Director of the CIA at the same time, the Dulles brothers, John Foster and Allen, shaped the United States policies both at home and abroad for decades.   Source the brothers - https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805094970?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

In the matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortlandall James Simpson, case number B.A. 096. And so my fellow American. Boom, Taylor, we are alive and we are recording. How are you doing today? Good. We just saw Super Troopers 3. It was funny. Was it as good as 1 and 2?

I still think 2 was the best, but I did laugh a lot in 3. So I was not, like, disappointed. I remembered after we last spoke that I actually have seen. part two and I did love it. Yeah, it's good. Yeah. That's real good. Yeah. Thank you for recording a little bit later so that I go to the movies. Not at all. Not all. It was good.

It was good timing for me as well. Today, Bill went in for his first grooming session and he lost two pounds of hair from the grooming session. So he was very matted and all that. So he's feeling good and friend these days. Nice. Nice. So let's go. Oh, let's introduce. us. Hello, everyone. Welcome to doomed to fail. We bring you historical disasters and failures,

and I am Taylor joined by Fars. I'm here. Yeah. That's it. That's all I got. I'm here. Let's do it. Are you ready? Because this is a big one. I told you I was like, mine's really long and I don't. This is really long. I have 12 pages of notes, which I feel like it's more than usual. I do know what this topic is. Taylor has disclosed this to me. And it is a huge topic. I can't believe it's only 12 pages. Thank you. It is a TLDR.

Absolutely. And there's so much stuff that I don't understand because of the Cold War and Vietnam and all those things. But we'll get to it. So, okay, let me tell you how I got here. You, your last episode was on the Charles de Gaul airport terminal collapsed. And in the news recently, the, it's at Tampa's airport is now named at the Trump airport or some Florida town. Naples or Tampa, I can't remember which. Yeah, whatever.

And did you know that the airport in Little Rock is the Bill and Hillary Clinton Airport? I did not know that. I didn't either. And there's also a Rinaldo airport, the soccer player. Oh, Madeira. Yeah. So they're not like all named after dead people. There are some like alive people who have airports named after them.

Like in Las Vegas, the McCarron Airport became the Harry Reid International Airport after Harry Reid died. So they're always changed the names of airports, whatever, but it reminded me of an airport named after a person. And it was on November 17, 1962, when John F. Kennedy reluctantly dedicated a new airport in D.C. after John Foster Dulles. Which is the most disgusting airport. It was, like, I'm glad it's named after someone semi-evil because it's a horrible airport. it's location and proximity to DC is awful. It's filthy. Like, if you're ever in Dallas and there's not enough seats on like, like seating in the terminal area, do not sit on the ground. There, you will be sitting in someone's urine.

Like, sit on your baggage. It's disgusting. Go ahead. Gross. That's gross. I also noted that Google, when I Googled it just to start, it said, make sure you're not thinking of Dallas because people confuse Dallas and Dallas because of their stupid. is added that because you have to be real fucking dumb to Dallas is the airport at DFW is Christine brand new gorgeous like you could spend you could go there just and have a vacation

in the airport well that's not like that well that's good for Dallas because you're probably going to be stuck there for at least a day and a half so I guess that's why they keep it so nice it's probably true yeah um so anyway there are two dullas there are two dullas brothers that I'm going to tell you about today they have an extraordinary ordinary resume that spans the entire 20th century of the huge focus on the Cold War and like spycraft and all kinds of fun stuff. I've actually been reading another Annie Jacobson book. She wrote the nuclear war a scenario. Remember when I read that a while ago? And it was like, you know, what would happen if North Korea sent a nuclear, nuclear bomb to California? And it was like the whole civilization has gone in about 45 minutes. It was like absolutely wild. So then she just wrote a new one. called biological war a scenario. So she does stuff like she takes things that actually happened and, you know, puts them into

like a different perspective. And in this case, it's the plague that is accidentally released from a Russian lab. And then like it's about six days before civilization is pretty much over. But so what her book is, you know, about biological war is like, and this episode is in about that and particularly, but the idea that like, even though Nixon said you can't have any more biological weapons, people still do, you know, so like the whole Cold War obviously is just like staring each other with guns pointed at your heads being like, I won't do it if you won't do it, you know, with like nuclear bombs, with biological weapons. And we were told specifically by the Dulles brothers,

which we'll get you, that the Russians are the epitome of evil. They are bad. They are going to destroy our entire everything. I couldn't find it, but like I swear I saw recently that like some government thing posted communism is the biggest threat to America. Like we're being told this over and over again and they're being told the exact same thing about us. You know? So it's just like we're and what that means is that these people who have this like anger toward each other based on this ideological, ideological differences can destroy the entire planet and they have the power to do so. And a lot of that started with the Dulles Brothers. So there's all kinds of things here.

There's like secrets and spies and stuff. I'm going to start from the beginning. So I read a book called The Brothers by Simon Kinzer. He's the one who actually, I didn't realize this until after. He wrote Poisoner in Chief, which is a book I read about Sidney Gottlie, but M.K. Ultra, which is part of the story as well. And he's very critical of the Dulles Brothers, obviously. a lot of people are. And he says the thing that he refers to over and over again is the monsters that they went out in search of.

Do you remember that quote from John Quincy Adams? I don't. It's just that essentially when John Quincy Adams did a speech on July 4th, 1821, he said the United States goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. So he was like, we're not going to intervene in things that are happening in other places. Like, we're not going to do that. Obviously, we do that. But that was like part of it. And a big thing the Dulles brothers do is they got searching for monsters,

searching for communism, searching for, you know, the opposite of America. When like there isn't an opposite. But that's kind of the kind of thing that there is. So the problem with them is they're looking for monsters everywhere, so they're finding them as well. Does that make sense? So they're like, something's out there that wants to get us and we're going to find it. And then they do.

And even if they have to make it up. So it's super complicated, obviously. When Kennedy dedicated the airport to foster Dulles, there was a huge bust statue of him. And then for like decades, it was put into a conference room. I think it's back out now. So if you do go to Dulles in the disgustingness, you should be able to see it. Another argument at the end of the book is there's a Diego Rivera mural. He's the husband of Frida Kalo.

And he did a mural called Glorious Victory, which you can look up. But it shows the aftermath of what the Dulles did in Guatemala. and it has like them shaking hands and being very happy. There's a bomb with Eisenhower's face on it and they're standing on dead children. So it's like they won but at what cost and like what were they winning and all the things? So we're going to get to all of this. Yeah, like I said, this is a TLDR because there's there's so much in there. But here's some information to start us off before I tell you who the Dulles brothers are and what they both did, both individually and together.

Because they spent, I mean, they're super important to the history of the United States. First question I have for you, Fars. Who is the current Secretary of State? Parker Rulbio? Yes, I didn't know that. Honestly, I knew who was up there, but I didn't know what his job was. But the Secretary of State, just so you know, and so everyone knows, they are in charge of foreign policy, which is international relations and policy goals, diplomacy, so treaties

and talks with world leaders, representation in the United States and international groups like the United Nations. They issue passports and protect citizens. traveling or living overseas. And in the line of succession, the Secretary of State is number four to take over the presidency. Speaker of the House then, Secretary of State, yeah. Yeah. Who is the current director of the CIA? Do you know? I don't. If I thought about it long enough, I would figure it out, but no, I don't.

It's John Ratcliffe. I don't know who that is. But he is the first person to serve both as CIA director and the Director of National Intelligence. And his job is to lead the agency, our daily operations of the CIA, manage espionage, so human intelligence collection, covert operations, advise the president with all the national security intelligence that he knows, and coordinate policy, work with the other intelligence leaders, and manage the budget, personnel and all of that inside of the CIA. So those are two very important jobs in the United States government. Just hold that in your head before we get there. Cool. And D&I, I presume, was not a job back then.

What is that? The national intelligence, basically the umbrella or agency that folds NSA, CIA, and a host of others. Correct. So it's like there's so many acronyms and different things. But yes, like a CIA started off as the OSS and then turned into the CIA and then Kennedy is going to kind of break it apart when he's president. And then it's going to change between now and then probably a lot between them. Got it. Yeah.

Yeah. So, okay. So that's important background information. Let's talk about the Dulles brothers. There are two of them. And they come from a family that is very, very religious, specifically Presbyterian. They, there were five Dulles children. They were all homeschooled due to wanting to be super religious.

And they are very connected with the government, like immediately from when they're born. It's like in their family. One of their grandfathers was a Presbyterian minister in India. Their grandfather John W. Foster was Secretary of State under Benjamin Harrison, and their uncle of Robert Lansing was Secretary of State under Wilson. So when they're teenagers, they're like going to work with their uncle and like, you know, learning about the government. And they have this idea in their head that is going to be important, their whole lives, that they were born for this, which they kind of were because they were born into a family like this. So in this time period, just like FDR, you know, you look at the government, it's full of rich white guys, you know. and that's because FGIro is a rich white guy and had its friends come along and the Dulles is like

they didn't like necessarily get along with a part of that circle of like it is our destiny to be a part of this because of our class because of our culture because of our religion all of the things so that's where they're going to get from their family and they're going to get that almost immediately when they're born because their family's involved in all these things you know also there's probably like 20,000 people in the United States. So everybody had a chance to be that. I don't know. Maybe. Don't back-check that one. So John Foster Dulles is our older brother. We're going to call him Foster. He is the airport. The airport is John Foster Dulles. He was born on February 25th, 1888. He's very religious.

So just, again, remember how religious he is. He is the colder and more rigid of the two. Like, he's a little bit, like, has less personality if you're going to meet him at a cocktail party, which you probably aren't. because he's probably not going to go, essentially. He went to Princeton and then DW Law School. While at Princeton, this is in the book The Brothers, and this is one of those things where I'm like, I don't know why we know this. And I don't know what the author is trying to say,

but he did say that there was an incident where he had like a really good guy friend and that guy friend like kissed him. And then he got really embarrassed and then never talked to him again. So like that was confusing to him. And again, like, I don't know why anyone would ever know that private moment. But I don't know. he was the author of the brothers was insinuating that that was part of the deal being like a very religious potentially having other things that you wanted to do but not being able to do them because of religion that's the only time i heard that so just FYI also while foster was at princeton um Woodrow Wilson was a was a professor there so he's like getting a lot of like he obviously is like around presidents and around the government a lot in 1912 he marries a woman named janet palmerie avery they're going to going to be married until his death.

His daughter, Lillius, becomes a Presbyterian minister, so he was super proud of her, but his son becomes a Catholic, which is horrifying. And eventually he becomes a cardinal of the Vatican. Like one of the only, if not the only United States guys who's a colonel at the Vatican, and he died a couple years ago, but he did come out publicly and say that he thought that the treacher is being too harsh on pedophiles. And if they, like, get rid of all the pedophiles and, like, don't be left for the church.

Notwithstanding that last statement. It do seem like a very accomplished family. They do. Absolutely. Absolutely. So that's it. You know, another religious thing, he just was like, it seems like he was like obnoxiously religious. There was a lawyer that worked with him who said,

quote, I'm not sure I want to go to heaven. I might meet John Foster Dulles there, which is funny. And then we have our second brother. Allen. So Alan Dulles will call Alan. He was born April 7, 1893. He also went to Princeton. He taught school in India. And he entered the diplomatic service in 1916. So he was a spy in World War I. And spying like has been around forever, obviously. But like this is a new espionage that I think also like ties to technology. Because now we have radios and now we have things that we've never had before in like a war like this. So he would spend some time in Bairn in Switzerland. And an anecdote from this time is that Alan was dating a woman from the Czech Republic and he heard that she was a spy. So he

took her on a date, drove her to a secret location, guys grabbed her and he never saw her again. And that's just like the kind of guy he is. He sounds. So he loved this. That was his jam. He loves being a spy. Being a spy is what Alan Dulles is. In 1920,

he married a woman named Martha Clover Todd and they had three kids. And his His vibe is also he is having affairs constantly. So while Foster is like very reserved and you're not going to hang out with him, when you're at a party with Alan, he slept with probably everyone. My memory of these guys is that Alan was the more traditionally evil one. I think we're going to get that way. I mean, I'm not finding like evil, evil in this.

You know, they'd have to go a lot further. I'm finding like that idea of where right you're. wrong and we're going to change narrative till we have to be right and everyone's an enemy about us, shaping a lot of what America is. Got it. Which is evil. Yeah. I'm going to say for better or worse, but I'm going to say for worse.

I would agree with that. Both of the Della says are bad fathers, but in different ways. But I also think that as a product of their upbringing, like FDR was a bad father. You know, Donald Trump's father doesn't love him, you know, stuff like that. Like, it's just like, nobody's really that good about it. No kid doesn't have some trouble. Of course. Even the best parents, like, whatever.

I'm not a parent. I don't know what I'm talking about. Well, this is very much a culture and a class of people where, like, you don't even talk to your kids. You know, like, you have nannies and you have tutors and you, like, barely see them because you're like, I'm so important to have, I have to run the CIA. I'm not going to talk to you. you know so like this is kind of part of her life um but as they're growing up they are thinking we're made for this like america is freedom and we are the ones who are chosen by god to do this like that is what america is um every room they walk into there's important people so they're just

like this is what i'm supposed to do another sibling that we're not going to talk about but i think could even have her own episode their sister eleanor actually like did a lot of work as well she worked in Berlin for a really long time. She wrote for the State Department. She was spying working internationally as well. She was born on June 1st, 1895. And she said some fun stuff about working the State Department. Like she said, it's fun to see how far you can get in spite of being a woman.

You know, she seems fun. If she were a man, we would have had three Dallas brothers to tell this story. Like she would have been precedent and it would have been the whole thing. But she was a woman. So, okay, now we have two Princeton grads. In 1911, Foster joined Sullivan and Cromwell, which is a law firm. Yeah, I know, Solving the Cromwell. Yeah, and this is a big deal.

So they do international finance, multinational things. They work on sovereign debt and overseas investment. So that's going to be important as like some of the main things they work on. Foster is going to be a big deal there for decades. It's going to work hard to keep foreign countries stable because for the investment. Like not because of the people, not because of, democracy, but whatever, but he's like, we've invested so much money in this country. We have to keep it stable in whatever way possible by whatever means.

So it's World War I. Foster can't go because he has poor eyesight. But he does join like a million committees because he's just like born to be in these rooms. So he's in the war plan. He's doing war planning with a war trade board. Ellen is in Baron being a spy. At one point, Lenin tries to meet with Alan, but he blows him off. And then later he's like, you should take off the meetings because you never know who it's going to be.

You mean Vladimir Lenin? Yeah. Oh, that's cool. So World War I ends as 1919. And Foster and his friend Bernard Baruch, and Bernard Baruch is like a big deal in New York City. He's good friends with Eleanor Roosevelt. Like he's a whole separate thing.

But they go to Versailles. And Foster is on the Reparations Commission and Supreme Economic Council, which means he's the one who is helping write that treaty that makes Germany pay back for World War I. And they're paying back like all of the countries that were like just destroyed during this time. And that's going to obviously plunge Germany into an economic nightmare that Hitler is going to be like, we got to get out of this. So we know that. So remember two minutes ago when I told you that Foster works at Sullivan and Crownwell and they do international debt, well guess who's going to help do all of that debt working whatever on the back end is Foster?

So he wrote, he basically, he didn't like write the whole thing, but he was there writing this treaty, knowing that is going to involve a lot of international finance and debt. And he's going to broker the deals to loan the money from the United States to Germany to pay the other countries. So he's like making a shit ton of cash from all this. In 1926, Allen leaves the service because he was still like kind of spying around Europe and joined Sullivan and Crownwell. So now they're working together. They're working in Germany. They're investing in things like IG Farben. which should ring a bell as a bad thing.

Did you know who they are? Sounds familiar. I don't think I can place it. They're the ones who developed the Zycombe gas that killed the people in the concentration camps. So they're working with these guys. They don't know that they're going to do that, but they're working with all of these big businesses in Germany.

They are investing in, like, cartels in South America, in, like, the Banana Republics and places where they want to invest in these companies that are buying land and need to make money. So they're a part of all these really big international deals. So they're both doing the diplomacy and investing in it. So they're like, hey, let's write these treaties and do these things.

But then like, you can borrow the money from me, blah, blah, blah, that kind of thing. So in 1933, on Allen's 40th birthday, he meets Hitler. And he doesn't like him, but he doesn't like him in 1933. Was he Hitler then? I think so. I think he was already Chancellor then. Yes, January 30th, 1933. He is when Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany. So Alan, it's April. He meets him then. So he already knows like this is happening. This isn't like a lot of things happening in Nazi Germany is happening now. And so he meets Hitler and he's like, this is going to be bad for my deals. Like they're going to default in all of

these loans. You know, so that's like his first, his first thing. Like what happens if Germany defaults in all of their debts, then their law firm? is going to be in trouble. He sees the alarming parts of the Nazis. Alan does say like, okay, we shouldn't do this. And then that's the conversation that they have at work, that they're like, we need to get out of Germany. We need to get the fuck out of Dodge.

Like, things are very bad. It's going to be bad. Hitler's going to start another war. Like, no one wants to do this, but this is going to happen. So they closed their Berlin office in 1935, but they tell people it was 1934. Because, but in 35, there's like no excuse for being there, you know, but they tell people that it was the year before. When they have the vote, the board vote, Foster is the only one who voted to stay.

And he's actually super upset when they leave Germany. And he said about the money. And he sees, Foster in particular, sees communism as more of a threat than fascism because of the religious aspect. Communism is like an existential spiritual threat because there's no God in communism. But he sees fascism and he's like, well, they have. a god there. So like that is a little bit, that, that's better for me. Wait. Do they have a god in fascism? I don't. Yeah. Yeah. Like they, like, they had, they still

like, believe, like, still had God. And I think maybe eventually like there wouldn't have been, but like, you know, a lot of it is like. Yeah, I thought it was an ancient Norse myth gods, like ruins and stuff. That was more of like a secret. We're going to throw this of people later. Yeah. So I'm just look this up. Under the Nazi regime, 95% of Germany was Christian. Like they, it said, yep, okay. While the Nazis weren't Christian, they let everybody stay Christian and then they were going to fold in the racial pagan ideology as they moved on, exactly like you were saying. Yeah. That was from Google, but I'm sure that's true. So communism, of course, is a red herring. Remember that from Clue? No. Oh, my God. And Clue, Miss Scarlett says, communism is a red herring because they're using it as an excuse to, like,

go into these other countries and, and overthrow these things. But it's all about power, you know, and they're trying to do a bunch of things. But in this case, they're like, communism is the actual problem. Like, they're less worried about fascism. But then it becomes World War II.

So then they're actually worried about it because it's economically a problem that we have just spent all this money on this war. So we're in World War II. There's a man named Wild Bill Donovan, who is a part of the U.S. military. He is unfortunately not Buffalo Bill Cody. I wish you were. Because you can picture Buffalo Bill Cody, right?

No, I can't. He's like... I don't remember my frontiers been history from the third grade. Oh, come on. So everyone else who knows, can picture Buffalo Bill Cody. He's like the guy with like the gun who had the show, like the Cowboy and Indian show, all the things. Anyway.

So Wild Bill Donovan is like, we need to have a real intelligence agency. Like we have spies everywhere, but we're not connected. We like aren't figuring out how we're talking to each other. Like, what do we need to do? And again, technology is catching up. So now they can like, you know, record things and do things that you like weren't able to do before. Like I saw a thing on the internet the other day that like the very first voice recording ever was like somehow on a piece of paper. Because I don't understand how records work, you know, like vinyl.

Right. It's insane. So, but the first recording is from like the 1860s. Like, it's pretty recent that we can record our voices and listen to them back, you know? So, oh, I also just learned in the Biological Warfare book is that they, every government has these little tiny like nodes that are everywhere that are like keeping track of the air quality in a bunch of different places. So like if all of a sudden there's like a high amount of like, like, car exhausts in like some part of Russia, they get an alert and they say, why are all these people moving? You know, like they can tell that all over the world.

Which is why. What's funny is there's a part of your story that's going to play in my story just based on what you said there. But yes, understood on that piece. You know what I mean? Okay. So it is World War II and FDR says, great, well, Bill Donovan. I think you're right. Let's do it.

and he creates OSS, which is the Office of Strategic Services, which is a precursor to the CIA. In typical FDR fashion, it's full of posh people with rich people who have traveled the world, and Alan runs the OSS in Bairn, so in Switzerland. And he's good at it. He has networks everywhere. He does cross paths with Virginia Hall. Do you remember when we talked about her?

So a spy that we have an episode about. They do cross paths because she's part of the OSS, and then she's also part of the British Secret Service as well. So he does that during World War II. Then when the war ends, Foster is involved in the founding of the UN. And he takes what happened in Germany and in Europe as nationalism is the problem. When countries become too hyped up on who they are, like the way Germany did, then we're going to have a problem. So if countries start to see any like inkling.

of going to that extreme, we're going to have to intervene, is what Foster takes out of World War II. FDR dies, I guess it's not all the way over, but FDR dies and Truman dismantles the OSS. Alan goes back to the law firm, and he starts to, you know, talk to people in D.C. about how he thinks we should have a permanent peacetime intelligence agency. And the CIA is going to be officially come into fruition with the National Security Act of 1947. And immediately he's calling people being like, we have other things to do. We have to do this. We have to do this. He really wants to be a part of the CIA, like as soon as it is a thing.

In 1949, Foster actually becomes a senator by appointment, but he loses in the special election. So he's kind of bummed that he like lost that election. There is talk of maybe making him the chief justice of the Supreme Court, but he wants to be secretary of state. Truman is asked to make him Secretary of State, and Truman says, quote, that bastard, not on your life, which is kind of fun. So, and that's just because they're just like seen as like surface level bureaucrats, but like not deep thinkers. It's how like everybody else sees them or like say it says how they sees them. So now we're post-war. There's already going to already like immediately.

As soon as you like start a spy agency, there's double agents. and everybody is like telling each other and a secret. You can't trust anyone, all the things. In the 1950s, Foster is going to also be involved in the peace treaty with Japan. And this time he wants it to be more generous than it was like the Treaty of Versailles against Germany. But like he was in both

of those rooms. That's wild. I mean, the guy, again, they are very accomplished. Like very accomplished. This is spanning two world wars. He was like super involved in both those things. So now we're in the Cold War. I'm sure I skipped a bunch of stuff, but now we're in the Cold War, right?

So I guess as soon as the war ends, we're in the Cold War, it's like the day after. There's no day that there's no war. I saw something on Instagram that I screenshot, and I'll put on our things, but it's by a username Jack Dexterity, and I'll put it on the thing. But he said, to teach my kids a lesson about socialism, I gave all of my kids a list of chores that I thought they could handle, but set their allowances at the same level. Then I had the CIA murder me and install a puppet dad. Jamie laugh. That's like what we're going to get to. That's about what's going to happen like right now.

So as 1953, Eisenhower becomes president and John Foster Dulles become Secretary of State. Alan Dulles becomes a director of the CIA. And you might say, doesn't it seem like conflict of interest to have brothers in these two super top super important positions? And they would say, fuck you, you're poor. We know what's best for you. I think this is why JFK hated them. Yeah, because they would like have very big. after work. They're not supposed to do that. Like, you know, and they would bypass a lot of like, yes, there's a lot of bureaucracy. That's a lot of steps you have to take to make decisions in the government.

Like that sucks. But like you can't bypass all of them, but you can, I guess, if you want to, you know. So they did a lot of a lot of that. So the secretary of state does the official policy and the CIA does all the secret stuff. Alan is the CIA director during M.K. Ultra during the Lavender Scare and McCarthyism. So we talked about those things in other episodes as well. Foster does not like McCarthy, but he agrees that communism is a problem. McCarthy does go after the CIA and Alan says, absolutely not.

Like, you have to go away. And he does get a call from Eisenhower that says you have to leave him alone. Like, you have to calm down. I would imagine the Dulles brothers at this point are infinitely scarier than McCarthy. Yeah. Yeah. So now there's some international news. there is an incredible fear of communism like the russians are going to destroy us um and they aren't

not going to do that but it also isn't as much as we thought it was going to be you know like we are they are self-fulfilling prophecies saying like we must be doing it and then the same thing that happened with like the nuclear bomb we thought that the germans were way ahead of us you know yeah um and they weren't um but like you know you just you don't know you only know what you know and then you also like fit that into your worldview you know like they are back they're trying to kill us. So they're doing mind control. So we're doing mind control. And we're like, no one can do mind control. It's not real. But you're like, we learn that. The Germany thing is ironic too, because they actually were ahead of us and they would have rapidly

outpaced us if they hadn't kicked out all the smart people in that country. And then everyone left who was still smart. We took after. There you go. So, you know. So in 19503, they get involved in Iran in stuff that's happening there. So the Prime Minister, Mohamed Mosidak nationalizes oil. And the CIA thinks that that's communism, thinks that that's something that comes from Russia. I think Russia is doing it. The British are mad because they used to own that oil and now they don't and they want their money back.

So Lodlis says send Teddy Roosevelt's grandson, Kermit Roosevelt Jr., to run the operation on the ground. And this is what they do, like the actual spy stuff that you kind of think is a joke. But like my dad used to talk about this. He was like, oh, yeah, they're going to send me to like into the Middle East to like, walk during a no walk sign and like you know do something do silly things but really is what they do like they're spreading rumors that there is this huge underground revolution coming from the shah who used to be the leader and they sent the the shot ends up panicking there's like an imperial guard

involved and eventually losidac doesn't understand that america is lying to him about the threats they're coming from internally. So they are telling, like, different leaders of Iran and different people that, like, this guy really wants to kill you. This guy has this intelligence on you. This guy does this. This and this. And no one had ever, like, lied like that before in a long time.

And America was, like, had this reputation of being the good guy. So they didn't think that America would lie like this, but they were. So then they're able to, like, get these things change and do these things and get these things and get, get Mosec and the Shah and these people to think that it was their idea. Like we were saying, like, saying, like, look at what's happening.

All this crazy stuff is happening around you. There's all this intelligence, all these things, all these secrets we can tell you that are true or probably not true. Really, it was just Kermit Roosevelt, who's probably like 5'3, like running around Iran, like, you know, putting secret messages in places

and saying there's all these things happening. When, like, they weren't happening, but once you start hearing that they're happening, then they're happening. Does that make sense? They just like make stuff up and get everybody riled up and then get the outcome that they want. I mean, that story in particular is, I mean, that is a deep, deep, well, it was the alignment of the Shah with the British that was giving away the natural resources of the country. And then the people were like, this guy is insane.

He's ruining our country. And most of that actually had populist power. And the shot ran to the Brits. The Brits ran to the U.S. because they didn't have the resources to the U.S. because the Brits didn't have the resources. I think they threw Mosadd in the trunk of a car and shot them in the back of the head or something.

It was like very. Once what they did. And that was like, yes. And that was the national zone they were afraid of. They look, we can't let Iran get this kind of power. You know, so that's what they were trying to do. And they did it without declaring war, without going to Congress, without like doing all those steps because they were like having a beer after work and being like we could do this.

Right. You know? So they're going to keep doing that and do coups kind of like all over the world. They're going to do the same thing in Guatemala. So Iran was like a blueprint for doing it again and again. In Guatemala there's president, um, Yacobo Arbenz who wants the Guatemalan land to belong to the people of Guatemala, just like wanting the land in Iran to, belong to them. So the land also, most of it belongs to the United Fruit Company, which is the banana

company. And guess who is their lawyer? Selma, Solomon. Yeah, Sullivan, Cornwall. Yeah, they also are their lawyer. Yeah. So they do the same thing. They do all these like radio broadcasts and like drop flyers from planes that say like this revolution is coming and all this underground stuff is happening to stop people's confidence in the president and in their leader. And sometimes it's interesting because it didn't work as well as it did in some other places because the literacy rates were lower.

So they were dropped flyers and people couldn't read them. So they had to go do other things, like do radio and things. But that's where the technology is coming and we're able to do that. And the goal is to make it seem like there is an uprising that Arbenz needs to focus on and not on the land so that they can continue to own the land. So they're just like baking this up. So all that's happening. They're doing that all over the world.

Another thing that foster, again, very religious. So in 1954, and a lot of this is Eisenhower. Eisenhower said yes to all of this, like all of this happening. He knew it was happening. He said yes to it. He agrees with the Dulles brothers, particularly on religion. He also doesn't want another world war because Eisenhower has been to war. He's seen it.

He doesn't want to do it again. And so he says, like, it isn't just capitalism instead of communism. he says it's Christian freedom versus an atheistic totalitarianism. So it's us versus them and we are Christian. So that's why, you know, that's the time we get the under God in the things. And in God we trust on the dollar bill and all that is Eisenhower and Foster Dollis doing that together. So now Vietnam, now they're still happening in Vietnam, which I know absolutely nothing about. It's again, like, insanely complicated.

But what But Vietnam, before the Vietnam War, Vietnam is actually French. So the French have, like, they are the ones who have, like, Vietnam as a colony for many, many years, which is why a Bonnese is on a baguette. Really? Yes. That makes sense. I know. So that's why.

So they now Vietnam wants to be Want to be independent. Ho Chiman is a communist and a nationalist, which seems crazy to the Dollars Brothers. And the communism part makes them think that they're being controlled by Russia. So the Dolos is like, whenever I hear that were communism and are Russia's involved, I'm not going to talk about anything else. So any nationalism comes from Russia.

Any land reform is communist, comes from Russia. Any anti-colonialism is communist. That's also coming from Russia is what the Daleks are thinking and believing. So that's why they need to go in and, like, interfere in Vietnam. They see threats, like, literally everywhere. And the goal is to stop communism at all costs. A couple fun little side quests in the 50s. The CIA is the one that commissions Animal Farm, the book, to be a cartoon, to, like, put on TV.

And they changed the ending so that the – and Orwell is like – widow was mad. So I actually just finished 1984, which was like a whole thing. But George Orwell also Animal Farm and the thesis of Animal Farm and 1984 is that people who only want power for power's sake are bad. You know, like that's the thesis. But

Alan Della's had them change the outcome so that you know, but this group in charge is good. Rather than everyone's bad. Yeah. Because when you first said that, I was like, did they miss the point of the story? Absolutely, yes.

So he's into that. He also, Alan Dulles, so CIA, is super good friends with Ian Fleming, who is the guy who wrote James Bond. So James Bond isn't Alan Dulles, but like the stuff that Alan Dulles and Ian Fleming talked about is stuff that got into his books. There's actually like a several pages where they interview each other and talk about like spycraft

and stuff and they're just having like the best boys time in the whole entire world talking about it. You guys actually seem like it had some, like, a very interesting life. Yes. Yes. It sounds like that is fun. They had a great time. A couple other things that they have going on. In 1954, there's Operation Gold in Berlin where they dig a tunnel to tap into Soviet phones. But like, as soon as they started digging it, the Soviets obviously knew because there was a double agent named George Blake, who was British, who was working for the KGB, but they still tapped some stuff, just like they're doing,

whatever they can to feel like they're infiltrating, but there's so many double agents, it's crazy. So they're in Guatemala, they're in Vietnam, they're in Iran, they're in Germany, and then what about Africa, you ask? Do they have someone to do with Nelson Mandela's in court? I guess that was way later. That's later, but there's something interesting happening

in, like, Africa and, like, Asian countries like India and Indonesia and not, not like the big ones like China and Japan, but the other Asian countries. where they're like, we don't necessarily feel like we are part of the Soviet block or the American block. Like, we want to be something else, you know, which is fair. They want to like be their own, be their own thing. And this is exactly like, well, like I said, and I just read 1984, but the third block is this. It's these African nations.

And in 1955, Asian African nations meet at the Bandung Conference in Indonesia to be like, hey, what do we, how can we like kind of take care of ourselves and start to like build our own economies and build our own governments? And the Della says don't even understand. They're like, no. Like you can't, you can't do something new. You can't have like some social programs and some of this and some of that. Like you have to do our thing. And if you're not doing our thing, then you're doing communist thing. So anything that isn't specifically exactly what the West wants you to do, Bennett's communist. We don't even care if your idea was to do something new. So they're going to do a lot of that.

They're going to get rid of people who are moving forward with progress and saying, like, we know what's best for you. We're not going to work. We're going to, you know, and they're going to do those same things. So they're like infiltrating, starting these little riots, spreading rumors, things like that. So I hated that they wanted just to be neutral. They're like, okay, you guys can just like do your thing. They were like, you can't do that. You can't do that either.

You have to choose one or the other. And if you choose the other, then like, we're going to destroy you. is basically the plan. So, another fun thing. In 1957, do you know who Carol Burnett is? She's an actor. She's so alive. She's in her 90s.

What'd she been in? She had, like, her own TV show in, like, 1960s, like the Carol Burnett show. And then she's in, like, some, like, older movies, like, I don't know, just movie Annie. She was, like, the bad woman in Annie. She's funny. She's red hair, like, red hair like Lucy, but, like, a little bit louder. She's cute. So she's still alive. She's 93. But so one of her biggest claim to fame was in 1957 on TV, she sang a song called, I made a fool of myself over John Foster Dulles, like, talking about how like she, because everybody was screaming about Elvis, like at that time. And she was like, you know, like, oh, part of the song is, um, my heart ripped apart at the seams for a state secretary, you know, like, it's funny. And like, people loved it. And like, they loved it. And it and it was funny because people knew who he was. Like he was like very, like, famous.

and people knew who wasn't, it was like a funny thing because he's very not, um, it's not charismatic. No one's falling love with this man, you know, like, that's a joke. That's the joke. I wrote he was very unsexy, like, not a sexy man. So this is going to happen again. It's happening in 1950s in Indonesia. We were involved with helping rebels,

have a leader who was like potentially a communist. And then, you know, just kind of saying like, well, they're a communist. And then once we kill them, like, they were, communist, like without even having any, like, of their own way to say that they were or were not. So by this time, they're still in these jobs and they're in their late 60s. And Foster gets cancer and he dies at Walter Reed on May 24th, 1959 at the age of 71. Three years after he dies, John F. Kennedy dedicates Dulles Airport to him on November 17th,

1962. Eisenhower is there. The Dulles family is there. Kennedy is there, you know, dedicating this. Kennedy again, like didn't love him and was like, this is annoying, but like did it anyway. So now it's just Alan Dulles. And there's going to be more things happening. There's going to be some stuff in the Congo. And we talked about this with Sidney Gottlieb and M.K. Ultra because this is when the CIA sends Sydney Gottlieb to Africa with poison to kill Lamumba, the prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo after the Belgians leave. the West didn't help Lamumba with stuff. He asked for help after the colonists left. He asked for help and they said, we didn't help him. So he went to Russia to ask for help.

And then we were like, oh, communist, whatever, and got him killed as well. Gotlieb didn't do it, but that was like part of his plan. Another big thing that I think also deserves its entire thing is the Bay of Pigs. I thought that's why the Kennedy brothers in particular hated them was because they kind of forced their hand into it. So it's after Foster is dead, but yes.

So the CIA had bad intelligence and basically be overreacted and it was super embarrassing to the United States. Kennedy said, quote, splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds. He was just pissed. He didn't want anything to do with them anymore.

They do another coup against Charles de Gaulle and Kennedy is like, enough is enough. Like the stuff that you guys are doing, doing is not helping us move forward. You are going into these places, destroying faith in government all over the world, and we're not really getting anything from it, and I'm getting embarrassed by the stuff that you are doing. So he, in 1960, Kennedy gives Allen the National Security Medal on November 28th, and he resigns the next day. So Allen is out of the CIA. But Allen gets the last laugh because Alan is part of the Warren Commission, which is the commission to see who killed

Kennedy and a big part of Allen's job on the Warren Commission was being like, let's do this without talking about our secrets. You know, like, let's not tell people about the Castro stuff and why Cuba might be even more mad at us. Like, let's not tell people about the things we've been doing. So who knows, like, what Allen's being on that committee did toward the answers of what they had to say at then anyway, I don't think was anything. also I mean it was obviously right for conspiracy theory the fact that he was on the commission yeah yeah absolutely um so

Alan was also one of the people in charge of creating um langley like the CIA headquarters in Virginia and later in life he would kind of wander around there I think he was like a little bit um like a little bit of dementia would wander around which I do not think he should have been allowed to do but they would like let him in anyway um and he died on January 29th, 1969 at the age of 75. He just had like influenza and pneumonia, just like old man stuff. So in hindsight, we know that the Soviet Union was doing stuff.

They weren't doing everything that we said that they were doing, that we thought they were doing, and we weren't doing everything that they thought we were doing. You know, it was a lot of like rumors and like you're doing this and you're doing this. Like they weren't secretly trying to make Africa communist, but it was like the fear of each other that made us build horrible things. And the Dolos has saw this as like their mission in life. The reason they were there was to like have stopped this godless communism from taking over the world. And so if anything that was happening that didn't make sense to them or wasn't what they wanted, they were like, this must be a secret spy plan. Like it must be. So they just turned everything into that so that they could secret spy plan back on it. You know? this validates my prevailing theory that if people in power did like half their job it just worked half time the world would probably be better off right because they're making this stuff up like they're they're making it worse not making any better as an example what you were saying about iran the distrust of the shah's association with western powers after mosa derr was

killed. I got to research that. I can't remember what ended up happening with him actually. But that mistrust is what gave the upstart, which was the Ayatollah, the foothold he did. Because he was a counter. He was a counterweight to the Shah. But like if they had let this guy do his thing, if they'd worked less hard and let this guy do his thing, then you'd have a democracy

in Iran and nothing in the past 50 years would have happened. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's what they did in like many, many countries around the world is just like interfere and make things worse. Yeah. And a lot of the stuff, like a lot of the fake revolutions and fake things that they did is like the United States lying to people, which was like, again, obviously not new, but like people didn't. They trusted them.

And then until they didn't. You know, so a lot of our like global reputation as being untrustworthy is because of it. of this, you know, because we were trusted and then we weren't because we were lying and spying and doing all these things. Which also points out that, like, Kennedy actually was, I can't speak for every one of his policies. I don't know nor do I care to research it. But in terms of, like, his instincts and reading the room, like, he definitely read the

room right with these guys and was like, they're trying to do stuff that is not in the actual best interest of the country. And their vision of policy that dates back to this down age, and we don't need that around. Yeah. He's right. Yeah, exactly. Because, I mean, they were doing policy in World War I. Yeah.

A lot happened in the last century. So, like, being a part of all of that is pretty wild. Yeah. Older leaders seem to step aside. Yep. And then I'll end with a quote from Peacemaker. Do you ever watch Peacemaker? Mm-mm.

It's John Cena. It's so good. Yeah. It's an HBO. It's cute. But peacemaker said, quote, I cherish, cherish peace with all my heart. I don't care how many men, women, and children I need to kill to get it. That's pretty spot on, it feels like.

Which I thought was great and is what we see in that mural by Diego Rivera. I'll post that online too, just like them shaking hands and passing money back and forth and literally standing on dead bodies. It's so interesting to me that like people. leaders, countries, politicians, they don't seem to learn the very basics of thermodynamics that everything you do somewhere has

like a reaction associated with it. It's incredible that like these historic events happen and then you look back to the cause of it. Like when you were saying earlier, when they wrote the Treaty of Versailles, it was like, if we bankrupt, this country and send everyone into

misery and depression and no hope or chance at any sort of a future, everything's going to work out. It's like, how do we not get that? It's so wild. It's very wild. I know. And then like most people just want to

have food and live their life and, you know, whatever. Like you can like, and the way that we're doing things, like, it's hard for people to just have basic stuff, you know? And you're like, if you weren't fighting over these, like, things that don't really matter and are going to just be the same thing over and over again, we could just, I don't know,

all have solar powered cars. I think it all boils down to like the Great Man theory of history, where if you want to be consequential because life is finite and it, you want to have an impact and it doesn't matter what happens. You know, as you were talking, I was thinking about the 30, 40 million. Russians who were killed under Stalin. And it was like, even when the ideology is flipped totally the other direction, it doesn't matter.

You still are going to have these huge consequential pushes in history because you want to have an impact and a legacy and point to something and say, I did that thing, even if it's a disaster. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I mean, they have Wikipedia pages and we don't. I mean, a lot of good people have Wikipedia. pages too. You don't have to do evil.

It's true. That is a good. That is a good way. So yeah, I feel like, I mean, each of these things, I feel like we could obviously,

like, just learn so much more about and it's super duper interesting. I was, been on Reddit recently, because last podcast is in the middle of a Maylie incident episode.

Have you heard about that? So I actually looked it up a while ago, and I was like, I'm not doing it. It's so awful. It is, during the Vietnam War, there was a thing where American soldiers went to a village and they said that there were like insurgents there or whatever and there weren't. It was just women, children and old people. And they murdered everyone in about two hours. They murdered and raped their way through 500 people. It was awful. And just absolutely the worst. And but last podcast is going like really far back and like talking about history of Vietnam. And then everyone on their Reddit, of course, is like mad because you're getting a lot of stuff wrong. You know? And I'm like it's so complicated. That sounds like a cop out. But like, I don't know. And I feel like. Another thing that I've said several times is, like, I feel like the boomer generation never fucking talks about Vietnam.

And you're like, your friends left. You left. And you came back different. And you came back and acted like everything was normal. And you were supposed to have nuclear family and everything was fine. And you never talk about it. Yeah. I mean, I bet that's a lot of trauma baked into that.

And, yeah, the history part is like my episode, when we get to it. Well, I spent a lot of time, like, looking at maps and charts from that area for reasons that you know that the listener will find out. And, like, I forgot that parts of Malaysia were called Sumatra and that you had the Mare Rouge in Cambodia slicing and dicing through that area. Like, it's, there's a, yeah, I'm not shocked. Last podcast is, like, exceptionally well research, I would say, from the most part. but even exceptionally well research has like a lot of areas of gray for interpretation that history books might not give it be the best narrators of it has to be like your life you have to be a guy who wrote a book above vietnam to know everything about vietnam because you have to read every book about vietnam first and then think your own decisions and then do that you know i was um my books are in a pile right now because my library is still being built literally in a pile so i couldn't actually go through them but I do feel like I have a lot of stuff that ties to Dollars Brothers in it. Like I have the Warren report.

Like I have these things and it's just like these people show up in all of these places. And, you know, maybe we like wouldn't know their names if it weren't for the airport, you know, as much in as we do. Because a lot of it was secretive on purpose, you know, which is, which is like, there's so much of it that's a secret. And like how much we know now, we didn't know then of what they were doing and how much is going on right now that we don't know anything about obviously. and we'll find out later and be like, what the fuck? They were doing that this whole time. And like they were. And like just who knows what's going to be.

Yeah. Interesting stuff. Thanks for covering that. I've always been really curious about them because of my, I've been to Delis Airport probably 300 times of my life. And I've always cursed every time I've flown in out of that airport. And now I have another decent. Which was closer to D.C.?

Delos or Reagan? Reagan is so much closer. Reagan's Virginia. But it's like, the bridge connecting Virginia to the metro DCA is or the metro DC area I said DCA it's it's yeah Reagan is actually DCA

okay and then Dulles is IHL I think something like that but no Reagan is the one you fly into yeah good to know but yeah thanks for thanks for doing that do you have any lists for mail force No, I don't think so. I didn't even look. But I do. I do look. But nothing. No. Thank you, everyone for Shannon written an email recently. Thank you, Shannon. And yeah, thanks everyone. Please tell your friends. And, you know, like us on social media, share with stuff. Maybe you have someone who follows you who would like to, you know, listen. So we're on there, Dubedifel pod. And then, yeah, I think that's it. It sent us an email. Dumptifelpod.com. If you have any questions or suggestions or things that we want to cover or things that you. you know of the Dulles is that we didn't cover, which I'm sure there's a bunch of it in there. So what should we read next?

Yeah. And on all the socials that Dovenfell Pod, you can follow us there, and we will join y'all again in a week from now. Thanks, Taylor. Thank you.