The Devil's Chessboard

New York Times Bestseller

An explosive, headline-making portrait of Allen Dulles, the man who transformed the CIA into the most powerful—and secretive—colossus in Washington

“This year’s best spy thriller isn’t fiction—it’s history… By the time The Devil’s Chessboard eventually climaxes with the events that unfolded in Dallas in 1963, Talbot’s argument that Dulles had both the power and temperament to execute such a plot is more than believable.” —Salon

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 recently 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—David Talbot reveals the underside of one of America’s most towering and influential figures.

Dulles’s decade as the director of the CIA was a dark period in American politics. The spymaster saw himself as above the nation’s laws and elected leaders, 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 war criminals and Mafiosi in the process. Talbot charges that Dulles utilized the same ruthless tactics he employed abroad—targeting foreign leaders for assassination and overthrowing nationalist governments not in line with his political aims—to further his goals at home, and offers shocking new evidence regarding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

An exposé 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.