Intel history

Fletcher Prouty: How CIA Really Works

Such a boss in the CIA was old Allen Dulles, who ran the Agency like a mother superior running a whorehouse. He knew the girls were happy, busy, and well fed, but he wasn’t quite sure what they were doing. His favorites, all through the years of his prime as Director of Central Intelligence, were such stellar performers as Frank Wisner, Dick Bissell, George Doole, Sheffield Edwards, Dick Helms, Red White, Tracy Barnes, Desmond Fitzgerald, Joe Alsop, Ted Shannon, Ed Lansdale and countless others. They were the great operators. He just made it possible for them to do anything they came up with.

When Wisner and Richard Nixon came up with the idea of mounting a major rebellion in Indonesia in 1958, Dulles saw that they got the means and the wherewithal. When General Cabell and his Air Force friends plugged the U-2 project for Kelly Johnson of Lockheed, Dulles tossed it into the lap of Dick Bissell. When Dick Helms and Des Fitzgerald figured they could play fun and games in Tibet, Dulles talked to Tom Gates, then Secretary of Defense, and the next we knew CIA agents were spiriting the Dalai Lama out of Lhasa, CIA undercover aircraft were clandestinely dropping tons of arms, ammunitions, and supplies deep into Tibet and other planes were reaching as far as northwestern China to Koko Nor.