The Cold War's First Family

DULLES by Leonard Mosley; Dial; 530 pages; $12.95

It would be too much to call the Dulles family the Kennedys of the Eisenhower years: the rectilinear and Protestant Dulles tribe did not throw each other into swimming pools. But the Dulles family had something of the same proprietary interest in the world and the power that runs it. From the State Department, John Foster Dulles presided over the cold war and the nation's other dealings with the rest of the planet. His sister Eleanor was in charge of the State Department's crucial Berlin desk. Allen Dulles, head of the Central Intelligence Agency, controlled a shadow kingdom that raised private armies, deposed Presidents, bribed Kings and generally kept track of the world. The Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg once called Allen the most dangerous man in the world and predicted that if he ever succeeded in getting into heaven, he would "be found mining the clouds, shooting up the stars and slaughtering the angels." Allen was delighted.

The Dulleses are remembered somewhat grimly: the stern Foster in steel-rimmed glasses, cocking his chin against the Communist threat; Allen, urbane but swallowed by the anonymity of his institution; and Eleanor, out of sight altogether. Biographer Leonard Mosley shows them to be a brood who, for all their Republican orthodoxy, were capable of great spirit and flashes of color.

A grandfather, John Watson Foster, was Secretary of State under Benjamin Harrison. An uncle, Robert M. Lansing, became Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State. The children, whose father was a Presbyterian minister in upstate New York, enjoyed a vaguely Kennedyesque upbringing that taught them sailing on Lake Ontario, the endurance of cold morning showers and furiously intense sibling competition. Foster, the eldest of the five children, was the foremost of the group, grave and sententious; he quoted William James at the age of ten. Allen, four years younger, was Byronically romantic and found a place for his temperament in intelligence work.

Mosley has, among other things, assembled a wonderful collection of anecdotes about Allen and the international dacoity that he practiced. In April of 1917, while serving as a duty officer at the American legation in Berne, Allen had a date with a girl and therefore refused to see someone named V.I. Lenin. By next day, Lenin was on his way back to Russia, where he immediately ordered peace negotiations with the Germans to begin. Lenin, who admired Woodrow Wilson, had wanted to establish an American contact.

Allen was a womanizer. When his wife first discovered this, she coolly went to Cartier and charged a large emerald to his account. It was her "compensation," she told Allen, and every time he strayed he would pay a similar price. Mosley does not record how large Mrs. Dulles' jewelry collection became, though Sister Eleanor guesses that "there were at least a hundred women in love with Allen at one time or another."