Historians/History

Allen Dulles: “I’d have felt much better…if there had been…ten thousand people killed”

by David M. Barrett

Mr. Barrett is Professor of Political Science at Villanova University and author of The CIA and Congress: The Untold Story from Truman to Kennedy.

In 2003, the Central Intelligence Agency declassified transcripts of certain conversations that the Director of Central Intelligence held in his office during the 1950s. One transcript gives vivid evidence of the DCI’s attitude toward the loss of life by Europeans in the lead-up to Hungary’s 1956 Uprising, in which 2500 died. The document was accessed at the CREST computer terminals in the library at National Archives II, College Park, MD. I came across them by using the search term"notes of conversation."

“We never get anywhere.” Allen Dulles spoke while comfortably ensconced in his Washington, D.C. office, probably smoking a pipe. His audience of one was an academic friend who advised the Agency occasionally. Unbeknownst to the professor, the conversation was being recorded that late afternoon of July 21, 1956. Things were heating up in Eastern Europe. While rumblings of discontent in Soviet-dominated East Germany and Hungary were becoming increasingly evident, Dulles thought that CIA analysts and operators dithered: “I don’t think they’re quite dynamic enough.”

The professor implicitly suggested covert anti-Soviet action: “Experimentation is really the secret of exploiting an uncertain period like this.” Even if nothing else were achieved—Soviet withdrawal from Hungary or other nearby nations was unlikely—Dulles would probably get “some intelligence results out of it.”

The Director lit up at the thought. It annoyed him that many colleagues believed that, since the late 1940s Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe, the “satellites just settled down and…lost hope and courage.” Look at what some Hungarians (“fellows in their early twenties”) had done recently, taking over a granary. It had obviously taken “planning, thought, and courage, because if you fail on that, you’re through. The chances of failure are pretty good.”

Despite that likelihood, Dulles suggested that his Agency needed to support future rebellions. Recalling an East German uprising three years before, in which scores of citizens were killed by communist police and troops, the Director recalled getting “very angry with some of my people” for not doing more to defeat the Soviet clamp-down. Indeed, just weeks before his recorded conversation, 100,000 Poles had revolted in the city of Poznan. The Polish military put that rebellion down, too, killing dozens of citizens. The “Poznan thing” earned Dulles’ admiration, showing “that the younger generation and the working people were quite willing to take risks.”

By contrast, he admitted, the “horrible thing” about a limited, unsuccessful revolt by Czechoslovakians a few years earlier was “that nobody got killed. I’d have felt much better about that, and the Czechoslovakian people would have stood much higher in the world’s estimation if there had been a thousand or ten thousand people killed in that. We kill more people on the roads every day for no purpose.” After all, “You’ve got to take some risks, and” --using words commonly attributed to early Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin—“you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

What ensued a few months later is well known: thousands of Hungarians protested against their communist government and its Soviet sponsor. Radio Free Europe, an arm of CIA, broadcast messages which encouraged rebellion and gave Hungarians the impression that the American government might come to their aid. When Soviet tanks and troops moved in massively in early November, a decision about possible intervention was up to the President, not a DCI. Dwight Eisenhower would do no such thing, fearing it might spark a U.S.-Soviet war. The Russians ruthlessly defeated the revolt in Hungary, and a new era of oppressive rule began. Many Hungarians felt betrayed by the U.S. Frank Wisner, who ran CIA clandestine services, thought so, too.

In late 1957, Dulles received another office visitor, his name not censored from the CIA’s transcript: it was Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., the American actor (and son of an even more famous swashbuckling actor). The younger Fairbanks had served valiantly in the Navy during World War II, was a part-time diplomat, and a friend of the DCI.

Amidst mutual gossip and storytelling, the DCI referred blandly to CIA’s radio broadcasts to Poland. In turn, Fairbanks passed on a compliment of sorts to Dulles: “I talked to the Polish Ambassador the other night….He allowed as how our program is very potent in Poland.”

Dulles blanched at that description of broadcasts to the nation where the “Poznan thing” had occurred. His response was to repeat the word: “Potent.” Fairbanks began to explain: “Yes, he said he was—“ but Dulles interrupted and responded with measured words: “Yes, I think it has been, but I think it’s been quite careful. I mean, there has been no incitement to revolt….We’re not anxious to incite the satellites to revolt….”

No doubt, heading the Central Intelligence Agency requires a certain cold-bloodedness. Perhaps Dulles’ arrogance, inflated by CIA’s success in helping to overthrow governments in Iraq in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954 was tempered by Hungary. Certainly, his defensiveness would grow after the Agency failed to overturn governments of Indonesia in 1958 and Cuba in 1961. But I’ve often wondered: after Hungary, did Dulles ever again speak so cavalierly about the loss of human life?