Allen Welsh Dulles served as DCI from 1953 to 1961 — longer than any other director. His CIA was the most powerful intelligence organization in world history, with an annual budget larger than many nations' total defense spending, an army of case officers in every capital, and a charter so elastic it could justify almost anything.
Dulles believed — and Eisenhower agreed — that covert action was cheaper than war. Why fight a communist government when you could simply replace it? The theory was tested twice in 1953 and 1954, with spectacular results — and consequences that still reverberate today.
Iran 1953 Guatemala 1954 Congo 1960 Indonesia 1958 $2.8M spent in Iran Mob hired in TehranIran's democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (today BP). The CIA and MI6 hired street mobs, bribed military officers, and staged fake communist protests to justify a coup. Mosaddegh was arrested. Shah Reza Pahlavi returned to power. Iran's oil went back to Western companies. Twenty-five years later, the Shah was overthrown in an Islamic revolution that the CIA had not predicted — and which created the Islamic Republic of Iran.
President Jacobo Árbenz had redistributed land from the United Fruit Company (in which CIA Director Dulles and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had financial interests). CIA trained a 480-man exile army in Honduras, dropped bombs on Guatemala City, and broadcast false radio reports of a massive invasion. Árbenz panicked and fled. The CIA installed Colonel Castillo Armas — who immediately reversed land reform and began a list of 70,000 "subversives" to be watched. A 36-year civil war followed.
Patrice Lumumba, the Congo's first elected Prime Minister, appealed to the Soviet Union for help expelling Belgian troops. Eisenhower approved a CIA plan to assassinate him. CIA station chief Larry Devlin received a vial of poison to put in Lumumba's food or toothbrush. In the event, Lumumba was captured and executed by Congolese rivals — but CIA assets facilitated the handover. 30 years of dictatorship under Mobutu Sese Seko followed.
CIA armed, funded, and trained rebel Indonesian colonels in an attempt to overthrow President Sukarno. CIA pilots flew bombing missions. When CIA pilot Allen Lawrence Pope was shot down and captured with evidence of US involvement, Eisenhower had publicly denied any US role just days earlier. The operation was abandoned. Sukarno survived.