BY JAY BRYANT

Back in the Stone Age, when I was a kid, even a pre-teen in the backwoods of Maine was aware of a man named Allen Dulles, who had spent the War (you know, the War) in Switzerland spying on the Nazis, and then was chosen to head up our new American espionage agency, the CIA. Dulles, whose brother, John Foster Dulles, was Secretary of State at the time, was the very template for the caricature of the tweedy, pipe-smoking superspy.

Even little kids like me knew that he knew stuff nobody else knew, and we knew we were glad he did. We felt safer knowing there were real, live spies fighting the Cold War with the USSR and making sure it didn’t become a Hot War.  Continue reading →