Devil's Chessboard

Name: Devil's Chessboard
Rating: 4.3 (3 reviews)
Author: Unknown Author
ISBN: 9780062416933

by Unknown Author

4.3

(3 ratings)

704 pages2015HarperCollins PublishersISBN 9780062416933

Politics

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About this book

"An explosive, headline-making portrait of Allen Dulles, the man who transformed the CIA into the most powerful and secretive colossus in Washington, from the founder of Salon.com and author of the New York Times bestseller Brothers. America's greatest untold story: the United States' rise to world dominance under the guile of Allen Welsh Dulles, the longest-serving director of the CIA. Drawing on revelatory new materials, including newly discovered U.S. government documents, U.S. and European intelligence sources, the personal correspondence and journals of Allen Dulles's wife and mistress, and exclusive interviews with the children of prominent CIA officials, Talbot reveals the underside of one of America's most powerful and influential figures. Dulles's decade as the director of the CIA which he used to further his public and private agendas were dark times in American politics. Calling himself "the secretary of state of unfriendly countries," Dulles saw himself as above the elected law, manipulating and subverting American presidents in the pursuit of his personal interests and those of the wealthy elite he counted as his friends and clients colluding with Nazi-controlled cartels, German war criminals, and Mafiosi in the process. Targeting foreign leaders for assassination and overthrowing nationalist governments not in line with his political aims, Dulles employed those same tactics to further his goals at home, Talbot charges, offering shocking new evidence in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. An expose of American power that is as disturbing as it is timely, The Devil's Chessboard is a provocative and gripping story of the rise of the national security state and the battle for America's soul."--

Publication Details

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2015
Pages: 704
ISBN: 9780062416933
Language: en

About Unknown Author

David Talbot, born and raised in Los Angeles, California, is an American journalist, author, activist and independent historian. Talbot is from a media and entertainment family. Talbot attended the Harvard School for Boys but did not graduate after falling afoul of the school's headmaster and ROTC program during the Vietnam War. After graduating from the University of California at Santa Cruz, the only university that would accept him, he returned to Los Angeles, where he co-wrote a history of the Hollywood Left, *Creative Differences*, with Barbara Zheutlin, and freelanced for *Crawdaddy*, *Rolling Stone*, and other magazines. He was later hired by Environmental Action Foundation in Washington, D.C. to write *Power and Light*, a book about the politics of energy. After returning to California, he worked as an editor at *Mother Jones* magazine before *San Francisco Examiner* publisher William Randolph Hearst hired him to edit the newspaper's Sunday magazine, *Image*. It was at the *Examiner* that Talbot developed the idea for *Salon*, a web magazine, and convinced several of his newspaper colleagues to join him. In 1995, Talbot founded *Salon* in San Francisco. The magazine gained a large following and broke several major national stories. Originally created to cover books and popular culture, the website became increasingly politicized during the Clinton impeachment drama in the late 1990s. *Salon* broke from the mainstream press by defending the Clinton presidency and investigating the right-wing prosecutorial apparatus headed by Kenneth Starr and Rep. Henry Hyde, whose own infidelity *Salon* exposed. Talbot stepped down as CEO and editor-in-chief of *Salon* in 2005, and returned briefly as CEO in 2011, but has since left the company. Since leaving *Salon*, Talbot has researched and written on the Kennedy assassination and other areas of what he calls the "hidden history" of U.S. power and the liberal movements to change America, as well as his public advoca