Speaker 1: M hm cool. I'm Robert Evans hosted Behind the Bastards,
Speaker 1: the podcast that generally starts with me shouting something a
Speaker 1: tonally that's either related or not related to the subject
Speaker 1: of the episode. Today it is uh, this is Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards podcasts bad people talk about him never introduced
Speaker 1: well my guests as in like government or cuse as
Speaker 1: an NBA player, Kyle kuse Ma, I have never heard
Speaker 1: of the NBA. So no, I was talking about the coups.
Speaker 1: I was talking about the coups, and here to talk
Speaker 1: with me about a lot of coups this this week.
Speaker 1: Uh is my old boss uh. And editor for I
Speaker 1: don't know, like a decade Jason Pargeon. It was almost
Speaker 1: thirteen years the executive editor at Cracked. So does your
Speaker 1: time at Cracked? Does it seem like a thousand years ago?
Speaker 1: Or does it seem like yesterday? It's weird. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: does seem like an impossibly different lifetime. Um, and also
Speaker 1: is foundational to everything about who I am now, um,
Speaker 1: which is a weird way for it to feel. Because
Speaker 1: when you showed up there, you were a little child, right,
Speaker 1: I thought you were like sixteen when you first showed
Speaker 1: up on the message board. So I could be wrong
Speaker 1: about that. Oh no, I was, but that was before
Speaker 1: it was Cracked. That was back when it was your
Speaker 1: weird little website, pointless waste of time. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: make it clear to the listeners what what exactly we
Speaker 1: were referencing here, because it's not it's not something we
Speaker 1: briefly met at a job a while ago. It's his
Speaker 1: formative years were kind of spent in an operation that
Speaker 1: I that I ran. So a lot of the things
Speaker 1: that are wrong with Robert Evans today you can blame
Speaker 1: me for in federal court in the upcoming series of trials. Actually, Jason,
Speaker 1: uh that my entire legal defense is structured around that.
Speaker 1: This is really great to know. Thank you so much, Jason.
Speaker 1: But no, like you did, actually like you were my
Speaker 1: you edited most you It was you were Brockway that
Speaker 1: edited most of the writing I put out for the
Speaker 1: entire start of my career pretty much. Um, so thank you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then Robert was the person who brought original journalism
Speaker 1: to Cracked, because prior to that it was a lot
Speaker 1: of like lists and things that were just rerivancy, know
Speaker 1: the sources, and he brought the concept of actually interviewing
Speaker 1: people and creating new content. And while I worked at
Speaker 1: crancked uh, like basically every other night I would have
Speaker 1: a stress dream about cracked, like I had blown to
Speaker 1: deadline or had screwed something up, and one height towards
Speaker 1: the end, I had a dream in which Robert went
Speaker 1: to some country where there was a revolution going on
Speaker 1: in eastern Europe and I had to go with him
Speaker 1: as his editor, which in real life, he's laughing because
Speaker 1: that's not a thing that occurred. I worked from my
Speaker 1: bedroom editing coop jokes into articles, but in this dream,
Speaker 1: for some reason, they sent me along with you to
Speaker 1: cover this violent uprising in I don't know, the Ukraine somewhere.
Speaker 1: And when we arrived in the dream, this was it
Speaker 1: was stressful because it became clear once we arrived that
Speaker 1: you were not there to cover the revolution, that you,
Speaker 1: in fact were part of it a flat jacket. And
Speaker 1: I was like trying to email back to the home office,
Speaker 1: like do you know Evans is like part of this militia?
Speaker 1: Like ethically can we like I can't. I don't know
Speaker 1: how to edit this because he's like I think he's
Speaker 1: now like leading part of it and so woke up
Speaker 1: like extremely upset. And those are the type of dreams
Speaker 1: I had. Right in my dreams, I was a much
Speaker 1: more important figure in journalism than I was in in
Speaker 1: real life, Whereas in real life I was just constantly
Speaker 1: having to like check the Wikipedia page for Transformers to
Speaker 1: make sure that I had the name of Star Scream
Speaker 1: spelled correctly. Jason, I mean, that's both a fun dream
Speaker 1: and a pretty good idea for a Netflix original series.
Speaker 1: You you you could make some solid, some solid money
Speaker 1: off of a him. Just say, well, Jason, how do
Speaker 1: you feel about the c I A. I have mixed
Speaker 1: feelings because on one hand, I know they keep us safe.
Speaker 1: Yes it's John Krazinski says, yeah, as as I've seen.
Speaker 1: I've read a lot of Tom Clancy books. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are heart their patriots, but sometimes they have to
Speaker 1: make tough decisions like which government's get to have democracies
Speaker 1: and which don't. Well, do you do you know anything
Speaker 1: about the guys who are kind of most formational behind
Speaker 1: making the see I into what it is, the Dullus brothers.
Speaker 1: Have you heard much about these guys? I have, and
Speaker 1: that my first exposure to the name Dullus was when
Speaker 1: watching the movie die Hard to actually that was the
Speaker 1: name of the airport that the terrorists were taking over.
Speaker 1: And I think it was less than a year later
Speaker 1: I was watching the Oliver Stone JFK conspiracy movie and
Speaker 1: he mentioned Dullus as being one of the conspirators he
Speaker 1: thought and the assassination. I like pointed at the screen
Speaker 1: and said, ah, Dullest, that's the guy who owns the
Speaker 1: airport and die Hard and and then it turns out
Speaker 1: it's actually, no, it's not the same. It was named
Speaker 1: after there's more than one dollar so to let the
Speaker 1: to establish my knowledge, I knew one fact about the
Speaker 1: Dullus is and it turned out it was wrong. You know,
Speaker 1: my my my only memory of die Hard two is
Speaker 1: that guy, that actor who was also a Republican congressman, right,
Speaker 1: who played the head of the airport for president, didn't
Speaker 1: he did run for but it wasn't he also elected
Speaker 1: at some point? Did he actually serve in the Senator something?
Speaker 1: Surely not? My dad loves him. Um, I don't know
Speaker 1: he was. He was fineing die Hard, but I remember
Speaker 1: him saying Dullest Tower about a million times. And yes,
Speaker 1: that was my first interaction with these guys interactions the
Speaker 1: wrong way to put it, But no, they're They're a
Speaker 1: fascinating set of characters and we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: them for way too much time today. So I hope
Speaker 1: you're happy, Jason. I hope you're happy, because now I
Speaker 1: have to read words about the Dullest Brothers and that
Speaker 1: will that will be him compressing it as much as possible,
Speaker 1: because one of these guys ran the CIA, the other
Speaker 1: Secretary of Stay at the same time, and they we're
Speaker 1: leaving out so much. Two of the most important people
Speaker 1: in the history of the modern world in terms of
Speaker 1: how they shape the world it is. These guys names
Speaker 1: come up in every conspiracy theory, but you don't need
Speaker 1: any of that. The actual things they did run so wide,
Speaker 1: and so the the actual conspiracies they were like inarguably
Speaker 1: a part of you don't. So yeah, the sooner we
Speaker 1: get started, the better, because we are. If this will
Speaker 1: not leave you with a full education on the Dullest
Speaker 1: better how long we go. We could do a Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan length episodes and it would we could set aside
Speaker 1: the next six months and and and get a decent
Speaker 1: grounding on these guys. But we have an afternoon. So
Speaker 1: let's do the really irresponsibly brisk version of this. UM.
Speaker 1: So it may be hard to believe for people listening today,
Speaker 1: but for a long time, our country did not have
Speaker 1: any kind of state intelligence apparatus. UM. Obviously, like the
Speaker 1: CIA and the FBI, don't go back forever. I think
Speaker 1: most people assume that. But the very idea that our
Speaker 1: country would need a group of people to handle international
Speaker 1: espionage doesn't go back very far. For most of our
Speaker 1: nation's history, that sort of international intelligence was gathered by
Speaker 1: a weird assortment of public figures, charming diplomats and like celebrities,
Speaker 1: guys like Ben Franklin. Like Ben Franklin in his day
Speaker 1: kind of did what we now have intelligence agencies for.
Speaker 1: You would have these guys who were like celebrities and
Speaker 1: kind of intelligence gathers who would travel around the world
Speaker 1: and hobnob with rich and powerful people in other countries
Speaker 1: and then bring back information to the government about ship
Speaker 1: that was happening in France or whatever. Like. That was
Speaker 1: intelligence in the seventeen and eight teen hundreds, you know, UM. Now,
Speaker 1: the most famous example of intelligence during this period was
Speaker 1: probably what come to be came to be known as
Speaker 1: the Great Game, which is a political and diplomatic ship
Speaker 1: fight between the Russian and British empires over Afghanistan that
Speaker 1: lasted most of the eighteen hundreds. This is like a
Speaker 1: century of screwing around in Afghanistan between both countries. Um,
Speaker 1: the Great Game was You know, soldiers played their role
Speaker 1: in it, right. There were actual battles and invasions, but
Speaker 1: the most decisive moves in it were the result of
Speaker 1: this kind of coterie of really shady characters, noblemen and
Speaker 1: diplomats and adventurers who would forge backroom alliances and put
Speaker 1: kings on thrones and instigate wars Like there. There's a
Speaker 1: bunch of wild history with the Great Game. Um, but
Speaker 1: that was like c I a ship back before there
Speaker 1: was a CIA. Now, for most of modern history, that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff was the purview of European powers. The
Speaker 1: US didn't do a lot of that stuff. In Washington,
Speaker 1: d c. Through most of the eighteen hundreds, very few
Speaker 1: elected leaders felt there was value in collecting intelligence about
Speaker 1: foreign countries at all. Part of this came from a
Speaker 1: belief that the United States was best ice off isolating herself,
Speaker 1: and that gathering information about other countries was useless, and
Speaker 1: part of it came from an idea elucidated by Secretary
Speaker 1: of War Henry Stimpson that quote, gentlemen do not read
Speaker 1: each other's male Basically, it's it's rude. It's kind of
Speaker 1: ghosh to have spies, because that's not the way we
Speaker 1: want to do things in our nice, civilized country. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the first American officials to make a concerted
Speaker 1: push for organized intelligence gathering was Secretary of State John
Speaker 1: Watson Foster. Now, John Foster's greatest claim to fame was
Speaker 1: the fact that in eighteen ninety three he directed the
Speaker 1: overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. President Harrison had encouraged white
Speaker 1: settlers in the islands to rebel against the Queen Liliu Kalani,
Speaker 1: and when they did, Secretary of State Foster approved the
Speaker 1: landing of US troops in Honolulu to aid the settlers,
Speaker 1: who declared themselves a government and were then recognized by
Speaker 1: the United States. A whole bunch of horrible stuff was
Speaker 1: done to the Hawaiians that we don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of time to cover today. We will at some point
Speaker 1: in the future. It's it's a real fucked up tail.
Speaker 1: What's important for today is that John Watson Foster was
Speaker 1: the first American Secretary of State to participate in the
Speaker 1: overthrow of a foreign government, the government outside of the
Speaker 1: continental United States. UM. I guess, depending on how you
Speaker 1: want to look at, you know, the genocide of indigenous people,
Speaker 1: you could kind of see it that way. But going
Speaker 1: to a set of islands off the continent and overthrowing
Speaker 1: a sovereign government there feels like a change, you know.
Speaker 1: Um And he's the first Secretary of State to participate
Speaker 1: in something like this. His justification for this would establish
Speaker 1: a pattern that has been followed by most of his successors. UM.
Speaker 1: I think it would be fair to say, uh, he
Speaker 1: wrote into in order to justify, you know, the the
Speaker 1: conquering of Hawaii. Basically, he wrote, quote the native inhabitants
Speaker 1: had proved themselves incapable of maintaining a respectable and responsible
Speaker 1: government and lacked the energy or will to improve the
Speaker 1: advantages with which Providence had given them. So you do
Speaker 1: see a lot of like ties to kind of how
Speaker 1: the conquest, you know, the westward expansion was justified. Right,
Speaker 1: they're not making use of this land and the way
Speaker 1: that we are, so that justifies us taking over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Foster was in many ways the first really modern
Speaker 1: U S Secretary of State. He was probably our government's
Speaker 1: earliest major advocate of espionage. In eighteen ninety two, he
Speaker 1: started to assign military attaches to American embassies and diplomats.
Speaker 1: He sent out agents to different European cities to go
Speaker 1: into military libraries and bookstores and comb publication lists so
Speaker 1: that our defense department would get early warning about foreign
Speaker 1: advances in arms technology. And you know, when we're talking
Speaker 1: about that stuff, that's pretty reasonable, right. You have a country,
Speaker 1: you want to keep it safe from other countries, not
Speaker 1: a not inherently immoral to like figure out what kind
Speaker 1: of guns they're buying. You know, that's that's hard to
Speaker 1: argue with UM as opposed to, you know, conquering Hawaii. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and John Foster's intelligence agency, this kind of thing that
Speaker 1: he starts to establish is kind of fundamentally defensive. In
Speaker 1: the eighteen nineties, UM he established a Military Harry Intelligence
Speaker 1: Division out of his office, and he used it to
Speaker 1: collect and analyze information his agents sent him from Europe.
Speaker 1: It grew steadily, and when World War One became a thing,
Speaker 1: it's size and scope of operations exploded. The man most
Speaker 1: responsible for the expansion of the Military Intelligence Division was
Speaker 1: another Secretary of State, a guy named Robert Lansing. The
Speaker 1: inciting incident for Lansing's dedication to international intelligence was the
Speaker 1: sinking of the Lusitania in nineteen fifteen by a German
Speaker 1: U boat. The American people believed that the Lusitania was
Speaker 1: a defenseless passenger liner, and the fact that hundred Americans
Speaker 1: had died on it caused rage an anti German sentiment
Speaker 1: to spread throughout the country. Now, the Germans argued that
Speaker 1: the Lusitania had been transporting war material for the British
Speaker 1: and that meant it was a valid target for war.
Speaker 1: And we now know they were right, Like the Lucitania
Speaker 1: was full of fucking guns. Um by the kind of
Speaker 1: rules set down, they were within their rights to sink it.
Speaker 1: But that was kind of hushed up at the time.
Speaker 1: As recently as my time in school, this was not taught.
Speaker 1: It was just a passenger boat was sunk by the Germans.
Speaker 1: Because it's hard, I feel like, and even now when
Speaker 1: you explain it, I think when you hear Germans, you
Speaker 1: automatically assume not the Nazis. Yeah, the bad guy's like, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is this is World War One. They're not the
Speaker 1: bad guys. They're not the good guys. We could easily
Speaker 1: have joined the German side in World War One. This
Speaker 1: is nothing that we're about to explain. But the dullises
Speaker 1: makes sense until you understand this part, which is that
Speaker 1: America there was a bitter debate as to whether or
Speaker 1: not we had any business in these European wars when
Speaker 1: World War One and then World War Two in both cases,
Speaker 1: and fucking world War One is like, you know, world
Speaker 1: War Two, my stances, well, there were Nazis, Like we
Speaker 1: had to do something at a certain point. Um world
Speaker 1: War One. There's a real good argument to be had
Speaker 1: that if we had just kind of let that play out,
Speaker 1: things wouldn't have been well, they certainly wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: the way they went. Who knows if it would have
Speaker 1: been better, it would have been different. There's a reason
Speaker 1: we have no movies about World War One were the
Speaker 1: most part like compared to how many you've gotten about
Speaker 1: killing Nazis. Uh, there's a reason why. You know, like
Speaker 1: if Indiana Jones Adventures took place in World War One era,
Speaker 1: would not be quite as compelling to be going up
Speaker 1: against the Kaiser's people. It was a totally different scenario.
Speaker 1: And the morality of getting involved, into what degree we
Speaker 1: got involved in using that sinking as the excuse to
Speaker 1: get involved, is very tangled and very muddy as compared
Speaker 1: to everything that happened later, where it's like, well we
Speaker 1: were we were late to come to World War two.
Speaker 1: It's like, uh, they again, something skipped over very quickly.
Speaker 1: In my history education in public school, it always is,
Speaker 1: and it's weird. Just it's it's frustrated me that the
Speaker 1: most recent major movie touchstone for World War One and
Speaker 1: German guilt in that war is Wonder Woman, which just
Speaker 1: just portrayed an actual dude as like a literal evil
Speaker 1: god trying to destroy humanity. Um, when it like, now,
Speaker 1: he was just he was. He was one of a
Speaker 1: bunch of identically immoral guys on every side of that conflict.
Speaker 1: Good stuff. So yeah, at the time, as you've just said,
Speaker 1: the only very few Americans knew that the Lusitania had
Speaker 1: been filled with a legal war material. Now, one person
Speaker 1: who did know was Secretary of State Robert Lansing, because
Speaker 1: he was privy to the fact that his government had
Speaker 1: secretly agreed to violate the Neutrality Act by shipping guns
Speaker 1: to Great Britain. The next few years saw a huge
Speaker 1: build up in both the US military and an attendant
Speaker 1: and international espionage apparatus, and by nineteen eighteen, John Foster's
Speaker 1: Military Intelligence Division had more than twelve employees and worked
Speaker 1: with agents and multiple government agencies. Now I bring all
Speaker 1: this up because Robert Lansing and John Foster were the
Speaker 1: uncle and grandfather, respectedly of the dullest brothers. Which is fun.
Speaker 1: So these are the dudes who, in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways raise the guys who come create the CIA um
Speaker 1: and the dull his brothers are John Foster Doulas, who
Speaker 1: were just going to call Foster, and Allan Welsh Doulas,
Speaker 1: who will call Allen Um. Now these men would together
Speaker 1: invent the modern CIA, overthrew governments of more countries than
Speaker 1: most people ever visit, and enable a number of genocides
Speaker 1: and ethnic cleansings in the name of fighting communism and
Speaker 1: helping fruit companies. John Foster Doulas was born in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. On February eight eight His little brother, Allan
Speaker 1: was born on April seventh, eighteen ninety three. In Watertown,
Speaker 1: New York. The Dullest brothers were two of five children,
Speaker 1: and from the beginning they were extremely close. Their father,
Speaker 1: also named Allen, was a Presbyterian minister, which is not
Speaker 1: a super showy gig. He made very little money and
Speaker 1: from what I can tell, he was a pretty decent guy.
Speaker 1: One of the stories his family told about him as
Speaker 1: there was a time when he liked, during a snowstorm,
Speaker 1: literally gave the code off his back to a homeless man.
Speaker 1: There was another moment where he like suffered a lot
Speaker 1: of criticism within church leadership because he performed a marriage
Speaker 1: ceremony on a woman who had been divorced before. Like
Speaker 1: that was a huge deal in the late eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: right that you would you would let a divorced woman
Speaker 1: marry again. But their dad is seems to be a
Speaker 1: decent guy um and is like, well no, and I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna not marry her. Um, So good on you,
Speaker 1: Minister Alan Dullish. He was a quiet, thoughtful, retiring man,
Speaker 1: and his sons did not take after him at all.
Speaker 1: They were both utterly captivated with their grandfather. With their
Speaker 1: grandpa Foster, their mother's father, who was the former Secretary
Speaker 1: of State, and by the point they came into the
Speaker 1: picture and international diplomat, they were equally taken with their
Speaker 1: uncle Bert also on their mother's side, that guy also
Speaker 1: became a Secretary of State. The fact that Alan Dullis
Speaker 1: their dad, made very little money meant that the Dullest
Speaker 1: family was extremely dependent upon the Fosters for financial support,
Speaker 1: which frustrated Allan. John Foster was thus the patriarch of
Speaker 1: the family, and the Dulles brothers spent every summer with
Speaker 1: him on his lake house in Lake, Ontario. They were
Speaker 1: raised to believe that power was in their blood, and
Speaker 1: from a very young age they grew up with con
Speaker 1: stations about geopolitics around the dinner table. Since John Foster
Speaker 1: was so prominent, these conversations often included foreign statesmen and
Speaker 1: diplomats visiting the old man for help with some issue
Speaker 1: or another. The book The Brothers by Stephen Kinser gives
Speaker 1: a good overview of how these summer days on the
Speaker 1: lake tended to go. Quote early every summer morning in
Speaker 1: the first years of the twentieth century, two small boys
Speaker 1: awoke as dawn broke over Lake Ontario. Their day began
Speaker 1: with a cold bath, the only kind their father allowed.
Speaker 1: After breakfast, they gathered with the rest of their family
Speaker 1: on the front porch for a Bible reading, sang a
Speaker 1: himm or two and not as their father led them
Speaker 1: in prayer. Their duty done, they raced to the shore,
Speaker 1: where their grandfather and uncle were waiting to take them
Speaker 1: out to stalk the wily smallmouth bass. So yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's how the guys who found the Cia grow
Speaker 1: up and shaped the modern world as we know now,
Speaker 1: completely changed the life of every person listening to this.
Speaker 1: These two, these two dudes growing up under the care
Speaker 1: taking cold Dad's under the care of this very By
Speaker 1: the way, if anyone listening, if you're trying to mentally
Speaker 1: picture what the dullest has looked like, what you're picturing,
Speaker 1: that's what they looked like. We just well, we just described. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't have to go look it up. You can
Speaker 1: picture these these white guys who are raised taking cold
Speaker 1: as Yeah, they will pop unbidden into your head like
Speaker 1: Athena and from the skull of Zeus. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: almost magical. Did one of him smoke a pipe? You said, absolutely, Jason,
Speaker 1: Why don't he smoking to pop my imagination because he
Speaker 1: didn't they look like Mr Potter from It's a Wonderful Life.
Speaker 1: They do, Yes, as did Yeah. Mr Potter might have
Speaker 1: been based on their grandfather. That's a solid point again.
Speaker 1: The guys they're fishing with, our two former secretaries of State,
Speaker 1: um Now and Alan, who grew up to be the
Speaker 1: head of the CIA, would later recall that his interest
Speaker 1: in espionage was first peaked by these fishing trips with
Speaker 1: his grandpa and uncle. The experience of quote finding the fish,
Speaker 1: hooking the fish, and playing the fish, working to draw
Speaker 1: him in and tire him until he's almost glad to
Speaker 1: be caught in the net, which is sinister as hell
Speaker 1: because for everyone else, fishing is like a peaceful pastime.
Speaker 1: We can be alone with your thoughts, and for this guy,
Speaker 1: it's all about seeing the hope die from the fish's eyes.
Speaker 1: Give up. I want to do this to people someday.
Speaker 1: I do want to interject here if it's okay in
Speaker 1: an audio format. When you're talking about multiple members of
Speaker 1: a family, it is very easy to get lost. To
Speaker 1: be clear, there are two guys, one man, the c
Speaker 1: I A one was Secretary of State at the same time.
Speaker 1: For the most part, they they their terms overlapped mostly,
Speaker 1: and they work hand in hand when when we talked
Speaker 1: about what each of them did, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: overlamp because they worked together, you know, the CIA, and
Speaker 1: when when the CIA is dedicating itself to reshaping foreign
Speaker 1: policy and the Secretary of State, like, they work hand
Speaker 1: in gloves. So when you talk about Alan and Foster,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be easy to get mixed up. But just
Speaker 1: one is the CIA guy, that's Alan. The other is
Speaker 1: going to set And it's more confusing here because they're
Speaker 1: both on a boat with their grandpa Foster, who was
Speaker 1: also a Secretary of State. Their uncle Bert's easier, thank god. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's it's it's gonna be messy. Um, we'll
Speaker 1: do our best here. So both of the boys seemed
Speaker 1: to find their childhood's idyllic as creepy as we might
Speaker 1: find aspects of them. Alan, who again ran the CIA,
Speaker 1: later wrote quote here in delightful surroundings, we indulged ourselves
Speaker 1: not only in fishing, sailing, and tennis, but in never
Speaker 1: ending discussed discussions on the great world issues which our
Speaker 1: country was growing up to face. These discussions were naturally
Speaker 1: given a certain weight and authority by the voice of
Speaker 1: a former Secretary of State and a Secretary of State
Speaker 1: to be We children were at first the listeners and
Speaker 1: the learners, but as we grew up we became vigorous
Speaker 1: participants in international debates. And again sometimes these debates are
Speaker 1: like literally with like the ambassador to China will be
Speaker 1: over for lunch. Like there you know this. These these
Speaker 1: guys are growing up in the halls of power, even
Speaker 1: though it's their grandpa's house now. The Dulless household was
Speaker 1: extremely religious, but Alan Dullas was much less religious than
Speaker 1: his father, who was also confusingly named Alan Dulles Foster Dulls,
Speaker 1: the young Foster Dullas, not the grandpa. Foster Dullas did
Speaker 1: take strongly to religion, but his kind of version of
Speaker 1: Christianity was particularly bleak and focused on labor. His favorite
Speaker 1: hymn was work for the night is coming, which sounds
Speaker 1: like a fucking bummer um. By age two, his mother
Speaker 1: noted that he was fascinated by prayers and quote always
Speaker 1: says ah men very heartily. At age seven, he celebrated
Speaker 1: his birthday by memorizing seven psalms. Their mother, Edith, considered
Speaker 1: her sons to be too special for public school, and
Speaker 1: so the dullest boys were tutored by live in governesses
Speaker 1: and eventually attended a private academy. Now John Watson Foster,
Speaker 1: their grandpa in the former Secretary of State, was the
Speaker 1: chief male influence on both young men. It behooves us
Speaker 1: to spend some time talking in more detail about what
Speaker 1: kind of politician he was. John Foster was a committed
Speaker 1: ideological capitalist. He recognized early on that American farmers and
Speaker 1: manufacturers had gotten so good at mass production that they
Speaker 1: were putting out more goods than American people could consume.
Speaker 1: This meant they needed foreign markets and access to foreign
Speaker 1: resources in order to grow the economy. Now, the only
Speaker 1: way to secure both of those things was what Stephen
Speaker 1: Kinser describes as a quote muscular, assertive foreign policy that
Speaker 1: would force weaker countries to trade with Americans on terms
Speaker 1: America is considered fair. Now, I've repeatedly mentioned the things
Speaker 1: that Foster did as Secretary of State, but in some
Speaker 1: ways what he did after leaving office is more interesting,
Speaker 1: because he became kind of one of the first lobbyists
Speaker 1: in American history. He used his deep ties to the
Speaker 1: Republican Party and international diplomats to promote the interests of
Speaker 1: a variety of corporations who paid him handsomely for his counsel.
Speaker 1: John Foster had always been a wealthy man, but he
Speaker 1: grew richer by leaps and bounds due to his skill
Speaker 1: at influencing and changing US foreign policy to benefit his
Speaker 1: corporate clients. He was a devoted grandfather, and he made
Speaker 1: certain both grandsons spent time around him while he worked
Speaker 1: so they would learn the tricks of the trade before
Speaker 1: they were fully adults. Not only did they live with
Speaker 1: him in the summer, but he regularly borrowed them during
Speaker 1: the winters, which he spent in d C. Young Foster
Speaker 1: Dulus made his first visit to the White House when
Speaker 1: he was five years old, as a guest for the
Speaker 1: birthday party of one of President Harrison's grandchildren. Young Allan
Speaker 1: started visiting his and Paul in d C. Soon after.
Speaker 1: Both brothers regularly dined with their grandfather and a carousel
Speaker 1: of influential people ambassadors, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices,
Speaker 1: Presidents Taft, Roosevelt, Cleveland, McKinley, and Wilson. By the time
Speaker 1: these kids routines, they had met like five US presidents
Speaker 1: um Now. In their early childhoods, both boys were told
Speaker 1: to keep quiet and just listen to the adults, which
Speaker 1: they did. Um Ali was noted as being Alan was
Speaker 1: noted as being particularly curious about other people. He was
Speaker 1: an avid listener, and during his first winter in d
Speaker 1: C he became fascinated with the Boer War. Interestingly, he
Speaker 1: came down on the side of the Boers, writing quote,
Speaker 1: the Boers want peace, but England has to have the gold,
Speaker 1: and so she goes around fighting all the little countries.
Speaker 1: So he won't. He won't stay that sympathetic with the
Speaker 1: little countries. Um. But that's a that's a fund that
Speaker 1: I are any Jason, I feel like it is extremely
Speaker 1: important to understand where these guys are coming from, because
Speaker 1: every listener is going to ask themselves later when you
Speaker 1: get into the horror stories. Did these guys do what
Speaker 1: they did because they truly believed in it? Or were
Speaker 1: they doing it because they were doing favors for their
Speaker 1: rich corporate friends and this was just cover for it.
Speaker 1: I hear this all the time, where people tend to
Speaker 1: take a very cynical view saying, well, they actually never
Speaker 1: worried about communism. Is just an excuse to crack down
Speaker 1: them mass labor practices where like where workers were demanding
Speaker 1: right things like that. The truth is harder to get
Speaker 1: at because I think on some level, these guys were
Speaker 1: both true believers in God has blessed the world with
Speaker 1: the United States of America and we are chosen by
Speaker 1: this brand of Christianity. They believed in to save the
Speaker 1: world from whatever. And then you say, well, yeah, but
Speaker 1: how does like free trade come into it? How does
Speaker 1: he had to go from that too? Like the freaking
Speaker 1: fruit company stuff we're gonna get into, which is people
Speaker 1: who don't are enough familiar with that period of history.
Speaker 1: I think I'm joking about earlier you were joking about
Speaker 1: over them up, Like how do you get from there? There?
Speaker 1: It's like, if you don't understand the interplay between Christianity, capitalism,
Speaker 1: and that like the belief that like capitalism is God's
Speaker 1: will for mankind, then you don't understand entire spots of
Speaker 1: the United States populace. Because I think it's very if
Speaker 1: you hook this guy up to a light deteched our
Speaker 1: test is like, did you honestly believe that communism was
Speaker 1: a threat to mankind? He would say yes, and I
Speaker 1: would come up, he's telling the truth. But when you
Speaker 1: see what they did and what they what they clearly
Speaker 1: knew they were doing, it's very hard to reconcile that.
Speaker 1: It's not Villains are not black and white. Villains are
Speaker 1: are complicated. That's why this show exists, That's why it's interesting.
Speaker 1: And I think we'll get into this more. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'll be interested in your thoughts at the into this.
Speaker 1: I think it's different for both of them. I think
Speaker 1: one of the brothers is a true believer, and I
Speaker 1: think one of the brothers was more or less a psychopath.
Speaker 1: But you know, that's that's that's impossible to know for sure.
Speaker 1: I'm interested in kind of your your thoughts on on
Speaker 1: that as we get to the end of this, because
Speaker 1: they're both different people, you know, like that is important,
Speaker 1: Like they're not they're not both doing They're both doing
Speaker 1: a lot of the same things, but they have different
Speaker 1: justifications for it, and we'll we'll cover that. But Jason,
Speaker 1: here's some products by things. Oh we're back, uh, Jason.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed those ads, um. I think I
Speaker 1: think Foster Dullus would have enjoyed those ads. He would
Speaker 1: have loved, he would have loved products. The thing we
Speaker 1: were talking about before the break is extremely important because
Speaker 1: I have been referring to the Dullus brothers as if
Speaker 1: they are two people who like two short people in
Speaker 1: the same suit, who functioned as one human being. That
Speaker 1: is not true that they had the same upbringing. They
Speaker 1: both helped shape the the rapid war against communism that
Speaker 1: would mark the fifties and sixties and everything thereafter that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were different people, and as we go, I think
Speaker 1: that will become clearer. I assume how yeah, it will.
Speaker 1: I'm interested again, I'm interested in your thoughts on what
Speaker 1: we'll We'll get to that at the end, because they
Speaker 1: are very different guys, and we'll be talking about that
Speaker 1: pretty soon, because they start to separate in this period
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. So when we had left off, um,
Speaker 1: young Alan Dullus had written an essay about how the Bowers,
Speaker 1: who were basically people living in a British colony, the
Speaker 1: British would say people living in a British colony who
Speaker 1: were being unruly and they had to fight them, and
Speaker 1: the British established what some people would argue with the
Speaker 1: first modern concentration camps during their war with the Bowers,
Speaker 1: and Ali was very much on the side of the Bowler,
Speaker 1: saying like England is just greedy for money. And his
Speaker 1: grandfather was so pressed by the essay he wrote that
Speaker 1: he actually paid to have it printed privately. Um. This
Speaker 1: made Ali's brother Foster very jealous, and he complained that
Speaker 1: his younger brother's anti colonial attitude was quote wrongheaded and infantile.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry you keep calling him Ali. Did people call
Speaker 1: him Ali or yeah, his family called him Alle. There's
Speaker 1: like three people who all have the same name in
Speaker 1: this show, so it pays us to be really clear
Speaker 1: here in this episode. UM. So, one of our best
Speaker 1: sources on the Dullest Brothers as they grew up was
Speaker 1: their sister, Eleanor Dulls. And she deserves an episode of
Speaker 1: some podcast, not this one, um, because she was not
Speaker 1: a bastard. She was actually an amazing woman. UM. In
Speaker 1: an era in which the idea of educating girls was controversial,
Speaker 1: she grew to become an internationally renowned diplomat and in
Speaker 1: fact headed the U. S. State Department's German desk immediately
Speaker 1: after World War Two, which is like a big gig,
Speaker 1: you know. UM, She's an incredible person, and she seems
Speaker 1: to have been something of the family liberal, or at
Speaker 1: least the most progressive men of her family. I don't
Speaker 1: want to boxer too much into a contemporary ideological category,
Speaker 1: but she was not like her brothers. Um we get
Speaker 1: some of our most unsettling stories about them from her.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote now from the book The Devil's
Speaker 1: Chessboard by David Talbot. Quote. Alan loomed large in her life.
Speaker 1: She attached herself to him at an early age, but
Speaker 1: she learned to be wary of his sudden, explosive mood shifts.
Speaker 1: Most people saw only Alan's charm and conviviality, but Eleanor
Speaker 1: was sometimes the target of his inexplicable eruptions of fury.
Speaker 1: Her infractions were often minor. Once Alan flew into a
Speaker 1: rage over how closely she parked the car to the
Speaker 1: family house, his moods were like the dark clouds that
Speaker 1: billowed without warning over Lake Ontario. Later in life, Eleanor
Speaker 1: simply took herself quote out of his orbit to avoid
Speaker 1: the stress and furor that he stirred in me. Alan
Speaker 1: was darker and more complex than his older brother, and
Speaker 1: his behavior sometimes mystified his sister. One summer incident during
Speaker 1: their childhood would stick with Eleanor for the rest of
Speaker 1: her life. Alan, who was nearly ten at the time,
Speaker 1: and Eleanor, who was two years younger, had been given
Speaker 1: the task of minding their five year old sister, Nataline,
Speaker 1: with her blonde curls and sweet demeter. Nataline, the baby
Speaker 1: in the family, was usually the object of everyone's attention,
Speaker 1: but that day, the older children got distracted as they
Speaker 1: skipped stones across the lake's surface from the family's wooden dock. Suddenly, Nataline,
Speaker 1: who had retrieved a large rock to join in the game,
Speaker 1: went tumbling into the water, pulled down by the dead
Speaker 1: weight of her burden. As the child began floating away
Speaker 1: towards the lake's deep cold waters, her pink dress booying
Speaker 1: like an air balloon, Eleanor began screaming frantically, but Alan,
Speaker 1: who by then was a strong swimmer, was strangely impassive.
Speaker 1: The boy just stood on the dock and watched as
Speaker 1: his little sister drifted away. Finally, as if prompted by
Speaker 1: Eleanor's cries, he too began yelling. Drawn by the uproar
Speaker 1: their mother, who was recovering in bed from one of
Speaker 1: her periodic pounding migraines, came flying down the dock and
Speaker 1: plunging into the water, rescued little Nataline. So that's an
Speaker 1: interesting tale about Alan Um and it's interesting it seems
Speaker 1: to have stuck with his sister for decades since Um
Speaker 1: little interesting and Talbot goes on to note that throughout
Speaker 1: his life, Alan Dulas was notably quote slow to feel
Speaker 1: the distress of others Um, which is part of why
Speaker 1: I think some of the things I do about Alan Dulas.
Speaker 1: But I'm getting ahead of myself. Foster on the other end,
Speaker 1: when Foster was fifteen, his mother, Edith, took him on
Speaker 1: a tour of Europe Um and Alan joined him kind
Speaker 1: of late in the visit. Edith's goal here was to
Speaker 1: open her children's eyes to the possibilities of the world,
Speaker 1: and in this she succeeded. Foster and Alan were close,
Speaker 1: but very different. Where Foster was hyper focused and a
Speaker 1: workaholic with poor social skills, Ali was hyperactive and prone
Speaker 1: to rage. Eleanor considered her older brother more like a
Speaker 1: second father Um, and so he was, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of a kinder and warmer figure. It seems in nineteen
Speaker 1: o four, when Foster was sixteen, he left home to
Speaker 1: start school at Princeton, his father's alma mater. He had
Speaker 1: spent most of his youth as the special boy of
Speaker 1: his family, doated on by a famous grandfather and constantly
Speaker 1: exposed to powerful people. Suddenly finding himself in a school
Speaker 1: where he was not particularly expect special must have been hard.
Speaker 1: He described what Stephen Kinser just calls an outburst of
Speaker 1: self hatred, which was fueled I think both by this
Speaker 1: and by his first schoolboy crush. Now this is particularly
Speaker 1: complex issue because Princeton was an all male school. This
Speaker 1: means that Foster Doulas's first love was another boy a
Speaker 1: quote wild eyed rebel, as he wrote, two years older
Speaker 1: than himself. Now this boy returned the crush, and for
Speaker 1: a time both young men enjoyed an extremely intense but
Speaker 1: celibate kind of gay thing. It it seemed. It's kind
Speaker 1: of hard to pin down. This was a different era,
Speaker 1: and you read about, especially when you read about like
Speaker 1: British colonialists, you read about a lot of really really
Speaker 1: close intimate male relationships that are speculated about to this day.
Speaker 1: We talked about this with Henry Morton Stanley. Um, and
Speaker 1: we just we don't actually know kind of like what
Speaker 1: the sexuality of everyone involved in here, because at that
Speaker 1: point the consequent insts of being outed as gay were
Speaker 1: so extreme, um, and people didn't talk about it, right,
Speaker 1: So who knows, like what was actually going on here?
Speaker 1: It's not clear to me, um, whatever the situation. The
Speaker 1: Dullest family biographer described Foster's feelings for this boy as quote,
Speaker 1: an emotion of a kind he had never experienced before. Eventually, though,
Speaker 1: this older partner, who does seem to have been gay,
Speaker 1: attempted to take things in a physical direction. And I
Speaker 1: don't we don't know that if um, if Foster didn't
Speaker 1: reciprocate because he wasn't or because he just didn't have
Speaker 1: any of the kind of emotional or mental vocabulary to
Speaker 1: understand what was going on. You know, we really have
Speaker 1: no idea. We're talking about like nineteen o four here, um,
Speaker 1: Stephen Kinser writes, quote, to a young man who had
Speaker 1: so far only embarrassedly kissed a girl at a party,
Speaker 1: it was a devastating and shocking revelation of what he
Speaker 1: knew from his Bible to be a shame and a sin.
Speaker 1: He conveyed the sense of degradation with such effect that
Speaker 1: the fellow student walked out of his room and left
Speaker 1: the college. So whatever happened there, it's a bumber. Um.
Speaker 1: I think we can we in land on that for sure. Now,
Speaker 1: Foster's school career continued, obviously, and in the summer before
Speaker 1: his senior year, his grandfather opered him. He offered him
Speaker 1: a huge opportunity. The Imperial Government of China had hired
Speaker 1: his grandfather to advise his its delegation to the Second
Speaker 1: Hague Peace Conference in the Netherlands. The older Foster took
Speaker 1: his grandson along as secretary. This experience had obviously had
Speaker 1: an impact on him. He's like in he's he's in
Speaker 1: a high school and he's helping to his former secretary
Speaker 1: of state, grandpa run part of the Hague Conference for China.
Speaker 1: Like how old would he have been at this time? Seventeen? Maybe? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Like that, of course that hasn't impact on you, um.
Speaker 1: And by the time he returned to Princeton for his
Speaker 1: senior year, Foster had decided not to become a preacher.
Speaker 1: You know. When he went to Princeton, he had kind
Speaker 1: of wanted to follow in his dad's footsteps um instead, though,
Speaker 1: when he comes back from this conference, he's decided he
Speaker 1: wants to be a quote Christian lawyer um, and this
Speaker 1: nearly broke his mother's heart. His family was very set
Speaker 1: on him following his dad as a Presbyterian minister. Now,
Speaker 1: Foster graduated in nineteen o eight with a philosophy degree.
Speaker 1: His thesis paper was good enough that it earned him
Speaker 1: a year long scholarship to the Sorbonne in Paris when
Speaker 1: he returned to the U S. From this, he enrolled
Speaker 1: at a law school in d C so he could
Speaker 1: live with his grandfather For the next two years, he
Speaker 1: worked on his degree and acted as his grandfather's assistant.
Speaker 1: Foster played paid close attention to the way the old
Speaker 1: man wielded power and influence to accomplish the diplomatic goals
Speaker 1: of his many corporate clients, while Foster was busy preparing
Speaker 1: to follow in his grand foot past footsteps. Alan Dulis
Speaker 1: also gained admission to Princeton Or. He's a couple of
Speaker 1: years younger than his brother, so where his brother had
Speaker 1: been studious and reserved, Ali was a party boy, constantly
Speaker 1: drinking and sleeping with women and getting in trouble. He
Speaker 1: was regularly laid on his school work. He always crammed
Speaker 1: at the last minute for exams, but he still managed
Speaker 1: to graduate with distinction, which really piste off his father. Right.
Speaker 1: His dad kind was heckling him this whole time that
Speaker 1: you're spending all this time partying, you're not going to graduate.
Speaker 1: And then he parties anyway and graduates with great grades,
Speaker 1: which really pisces off dad. Now, Ali's thesist didn't win
Speaker 1: him a year at the Sore Bone, but it won
Speaker 1: him a cash prize that he used to travel to India.
Speaker 1: While he was on board the steamship that would take
Speaker 1: him there, he read a book called Kim by Ruard Kipling. Now.
Speaker 1: Kim is a novel about the son of an Irish
Speaker 1: soldier in India. Orphaned at a young age and left
Speaker 1: to adventure around Southeast Asia and up into the Himalayas.
Speaker 1: He's adopted by a wise lama and is eventually found
Speaker 1: and brought back to Great Britain, where he receives proper
Speaker 1: education and is trained to be a spy, and then
Speaker 1: sent back to the Himalayas to participate in the Great
Speaker 1: Game and thwart Russian agents. Um. Now, this is an
Speaker 1: interesting book. It's it's kind of seen as an example
Speaker 1: of kind of like one historian of children's literature called
Speaker 1: it the apothesis of the viccor the Victorian cult of childhood,
Speaker 1: which is this this the idea that a childhood is
Speaker 1: a thing is really kind of new in the late
Speaker 1: eight hundred, it's early nineteen hundreds, right, children were just
Speaker 1: kind of like labor or things that died for a
Speaker 1: long time. Um. And the idea that like there was
Speaker 1: something like sacred and special and that children might even
Speaker 1: have special insight that adults don't have was kind of
Speaker 1: being explored in fiction during this time, and that's a
Speaker 1: big aspect of the novel Kim. There was also a
Speaker 1: countercultural element to this kind of idea of the cult
Speaker 1: of the child, an obsession with the inherent innocence of
Speaker 1: children and a belief that this made them better than
Speaker 1: fallen and corrupt adults. Anyway, Alan Dules falls in love
Speaker 1: with this book, and he's particularly enamored by the way
Speaker 1: Kipling described the British Empire, which in Kim is a
Speaker 1: fundamentally heroic force. It's described Kipling describes the Empire as
Speaker 1: quote the sort to oversee justice because they know the
Speaker 1: land and the customs of the land. Now, during the
Speaker 1: course of the book, Kim is told by this Lama
Speaker 1: he befriends that quote. From time to time God causes
Speaker 1: men to be born, and thou art one of them
Speaker 1: who have a luss to go ahead at the risk
Speaker 1: of their lives and discover news. And this book changes
Speaker 1: Alan Dulis's life. He keeps a copy of it by
Speaker 1: his bedside table for the but when he dies, like
Speaker 1: decades later, this book is next to his table like
Speaker 1: it never leaves his side, like the literal copy that
Speaker 1: he takes with him to India doesn't leave aside the
Speaker 1: rest of his life. When he lands in India after
Speaker 1: the steamship, he uses his Princeton connections to get a
Speaker 1: job teaching English. As a young white dude in early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds India, he lived like a king. For the
Speaker 1: first time in his life. He had servants, and Alan
Speaker 1: quickly realized that he quite like having liked having servants.
Speaker 1: From then on, as Eleanor wrote, quote, there was hardly
Speaker 1: a time when he didn't have someone to fetch and
Speaker 1: carry for him. Now, the work he did in India
Speaker 1: was not super demanding, so Ali had ample time to
Speaker 1: engage in his schoolboy dreams of Eastern adventure. He explored ruins,
Speaker 1: he studied Sanskrit, He went to readings by Hindu mystics.
Speaker 1: He found himself drawn particularly to the anti colonial movement,
Speaker 1: which is interesting because he's he's consistent with this, and
Speaker 1: that he also criticized the British Empire over their treatment
Speaker 1: of the Boers. But he loves this book, which is
Speaker 1: really a love poem to the British Empires. He's kind
Speaker 1: of dealing with a lot of controversial stuff at this period,
Speaker 1: which I find interesting. And while you don't ever want
Speaker 1: to like diagnose someone from Afar, like that's a basic journalism,
Speaker 1: no no, but Alan Doulas sounds like a classic narcissist
Speaker 1: from everything he does, from the burst of rage like
Speaker 1: how dare you do the thing that I didn't want
Speaker 1: you to do? Like, and to the fact that he
Speaker 1: can't really conceptualize other people as having agency or value,
Speaker 1: that he didn't see why it matters of other people
Speaker 1: die or whatever, and then that he enjoys having servants
Speaker 1: an you know that sees life is being kind of
Speaker 1: easy for him. That would probably fly into a rage
Speaker 1: the moment. It wasn't that's all narcissism stuff. And I think, again,
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert any subject, let alone this one.
Speaker 1: To me, that's what he feels like as a classic
Speaker 1: narcissist above all else, which, by the way, is a
Speaker 1: huge advantage if your goal is to run the world
Speaker 1: from behind the scenes. Narcissism is not people who do yeah,
Speaker 1: and and this job, Narcissism is not a detriment. We know.
Speaker 1: It's almost it's like being tall for basketball. And I
Speaker 1: think one of the things that kind of that very
Speaker 1: irresponsible Jason diagnosis that I also make um over the
Speaker 1: over the internet to a man who died before I
Speaker 1: was born. Um. I think that also ties in pretty
Speaker 1: well to why he finds Kim so attractive. That particular
Speaker 1: line that I read that from time to time God
Speaker 1: causes men to be born who are going to go
Speaker 1: out and do great discover news and you know, bring
Speaker 1: uh information about the world and change it. You know,
Speaker 1: you are the protagonist of reality. Yes, God has chosen
Speaker 1: you to be the main character of the story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you are Jason Statham, um, which you know, my fellow
Speaker 1: Statham might snow there's only one Jason Statham, and it
Speaker 1: is confusingly Dwayne the Rock Johnson. You know what else
Speaker 1: is Dwayne the Rock Johnson Jason Products and Services. We're
Speaker 1: back and we're just celebrating the Rock for a moment.
Speaker 1: UMU drinking him in. So during his time at Princeton,
Speaker 1: Alan Dullis dated numerous women, most of whom he either
Speaker 1: cheated on or dumped very quickly. One of these women
Speaker 1: was Janet Avery. He found her boring. She was, in
Speaker 1: his words, too conventional and practical, so he dropped her,
Speaker 1: and immediately afterwards his older brother Foster started dating her.
Speaker 1: They soon married and were married like the rest of
Speaker 1: their lives. Foster is very dedicated to his wife um
Speaker 1: and very very much in love. Alan, I don't know
Speaker 1: is capable of that kind of relationship. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: that more later. Now. Once he was done with law school,
Speaker 1: Foster reached out to the head of the Sullivan and
Speaker 1: Cromwell law firm to inquire about a job. Now, at
Speaker 1: the time, Sullivan and Cromwell was probably the most powerful
Speaker 1: law They may be the most powerful law firm that
Speaker 1: ever existed. Um by a long margin. Sullivan and Cromwell
Speaker 1: had been formed in eighteen seventy nine to do something
Speaker 1: that at the time was new, bring investors and businesses
Speaker 1: together to create large, modern corporations. Their job in an
Speaker 1: era when corporations didn't really exist in the in the
Speaker 1: kind of the modern sense of the word, was to
Speaker 1: create them. That's what this law firm did. Stephen Kinzer writes,
Speaker 1: quote Sullivan and Cromwell played an important role in the
Speaker 1: development of modern capitalism by helping to organize what its
Speaker 1: official history calls some of America's greatest industrial, commercial, and
Speaker 1: financial enterprises. In eighteen eighty two, it created Edison General
Speaker 1: Electric Company. Seven years later, with the financier JP Morgan
Speaker 1: as its client, it wove twenty one steelmakers into the
Speaker 1: National Tube Company, and then in one merged National Tube
Speaker 1: with seven other companies to create US Steel. Capitalized it
Speaker 1: more than one billion dollars, an astounding sum at the time.
Speaker 1: The railroad magnate E. H. Harriman, whom President Theodore Roosevelt
Speaker 1: had denounced as a malefactor of great wealth and enemy
Speaker 1: of the Republic, hired the firm to wage two of
Speaker 1: his legendary proxy wars, one to take over the Illinois
Speaker 1: Central railroad and another to fend off angry shareholders at
Speaker 1: the Wells Fargo Bank, and won the first with tactics
Speaker 1: and that a New York newspaper called one of those
Speaker 1: ruthless exercises of their power of sheer millions, and the
Speaker 1: second with complex maneuvers that, according to a book about
Speaker 1: the firm, amounted to deceit, bribery and trickery that was
Speaker 1: all legal. Soon afterwards, working on behalf of French investors
Speaker 1: who were facing ruin after their effort to build a
Speaker 1: canal across Panama collapsed, Sullivan and Cromwell achieved a unique
Speaker 1: triumph in global politics through a master a lobbying campaign.
Speaker 1: It's endlessly resourceful. Managing partner William Nelson Cromwell persuaded the
Speaker 1: United States Congress to reverse this decision to build a
Speaker 1: canal across Nicaragua and to play pay his French clients
Speaker 1: forty million for their land in Panama. Instead, we could
Speaker 1: do episodes on this law firm like they're they invent
Speaker 1: a lot of the modern US ecoto, or at least
Speaker 1: not invent. They are foundational in the structural formation of
Speaker 1: a huge amount of the modern US economy. UM we
Speaker 1: talk about them a little bit more in our episodes
Speaker 1: on Panama with Chelsea Manning. UM, if you want to
Speaker 1: check some of that out. Now, one newspaper editorial described
Speaker 1: William Cromwell as quote the man whose masterful mind wetted
Speaker 1: on the grindstone of corporate cunning, conceived and carried out
Speaker 1: the rape of the Isthmus, Which is the kind of
Speaker 1: writing you don't get in editorials anymore. M that's a shape. Now,
Speaker 1: this was the guy that Foster Dolast in his job
Speaker 1: application to the guy who raped Panama is the dude
Speaker 1: he applies for a gig with. Now, Normally, you know,
Speaker 1: Foster Dolts at this time has just graduated Princeton, He
Speaker 1: has no established legal career. This is the biggest law
Speaker 1: firm in the world. Normally, a dude with Foster's resume
Speaker 1: is not going to get the attention of the guy
Speaker 1: who's maybe the most powerful single lawyer on the planet.
Speaker 1: But William Cromwell was good friends with Foster's grandfather, the
Speaker 1: former Secretary of State, who put in a good word
Speaker 1: for his grandson and assured that the assured Cromwell that
Speaker 1: the fresh out of law school twenty something, UM would
Speaker 1: do well at the job, so Foster gets hired. You know,
Speaker 1: nepotism obviously, right, how else is it going to start
Speaker 1: for this guy? Um? His starting salary was twelve fifty
Speaker 1: per week, which actually put him about a hundred dollars
Speaker 1: a year below the average American salary at the time,
Speaker 1: so they're not paying him much at a start. But
Speaker 1: of course, his grandpa's rich, and his grandfather sends some
Speaker 1: money every month, which ensures he's able to still afford
Speaker 1: a nice home in New York City close to his
Speaker 1: firm's new office. No, this is him kind of introducing
Speaker 1: himself to high society, to politics. You have to have
Speaker 1: a nice house to host people. His grandpa pays for
Speaker 1: all that. Foster Dulas was a hard worker, though he
Speaker 1: was a workaholic from the get go. He was actually
Speaker 1: unable to walk during his honeymoon with Janet because right
Speaker 1: before the honeymoon he took a business trip to British Guyana,
Speaker 1: which gave him a nearly fatal dose of malaria. And
Speaker 1: this will be kind of the pattern of their relationship.
Speaker 1: He doesn't cheat on his wife. He's very dedicated to her,
Speaker 1: but he is even more dedicated to his work. Alan
Speaker 1: Dullas returned home after his time in India, and unlike
Speaker 1: his older brother, he did not initially have a strong
Speaker 1: sense of direction for his life. It was World War
Speaker 1: One that would finally provide the younger Dullus brother with
Speaker 1: his great inspiration. During the war years, Great Britain sent
Speaker 1: Captain Alex Gaunt to Washington, d C. To act as
Speaker 1: their government's military attache here. Now, Gaunt was, of course
Speaker 1: friends with Alan's uncle Lansing, who was by that point
Speaker 1: the U S Secretary of State under Wilson. His uncle,
Speaker 1: Burt Right, the guy he goes fishing with as a kid,
Speaker 1: is the Secretary of State. When World War One gets off,
Speaker 1: and Alan spends time with his uncle and this British
Speaker 1: spy who's working they're kind of trying to convince the
Speaker 1: U S to get involved in the war. On Great
Speaker 1: Britain's behalf. Alan spends a lot of time with his
Speaker 1: uncle and Captain Gaunt, and he listens with rapt attention
Speaker 1: as Gaunt talks about his job. Now, at this point,
Speaker 1: the British were trying their damnedest to bring the U
Speaker 1: S into war on their side of the equation. For
Speaker 1: Captain Gaunt. This meant hiring Pinkerton detectives to monitor U
Speaker 1: s ports and hiring agents to infiltrate and report on
Speaker 1: groups with quote anti British attitudes. Alan Dulas was enthralled
Speaker 1: by this. One source close to him at the time
Speaker 1: later recalled he thought of Gaunt as one of the
Speaker 1: most exciting men he had ever met. He made up
Speaker 1: his mind that one of these days he would become
Speaker 1: an intelligence operative just like him, and you get kind
Speaker 1: of a James Bond vibe from Gaunt. Of course, Allan
Speaker 1: wants to be this guy. So Alan takes the Foreign
Speaker 1: Service examined nineteen sixteen. He passes and joins the State Department,
Speaker 1: and he soon made a diplomat because again, his grandpa
Speaker 1: is the former Secretary of State. His uncle's the current
Speaker 1: Secretary of State. Not hard to get a gig at
Speaker 1: the State State Department when your uncle's the Secretary of State.
Speaker 1: The department sent Alan to burn, Switzerland, which was both
Speaker 1: close enough to the war to be exciting and neutral
Speaker 1: enough to still have the kind of nightlife that Alan
Speaker 1: Dullis enjoyed. He spent most of his time there hob
Speaker 1: nobbing with other diplomats and by one account, sleeping his
Speaker 1: way through the local refugee population. Diplomat was Alan's official
Speaker 1: job title, but in that place in time, his real
Speaker 1: job was espionage, spying on other diplomats, building sources, and
Speaker 1: funneling information back to the US. He found this extremely exciting,
Speaker 1: and he bragged his family that his life was now
Speaker 1: filled with quote unmentionable happenings. He writes this in a
Speaker 1: letter back home, like I have a spy. Guys, this
Speaker 1: isn't that cool. At what point in history, because it
Speaker 1: sounds like it was before this, At what point in
Speaker 1: history did we as a culture, or in the West
Speaker 1: as a culture, decide that being a spy was sexy.
Speaker 1: I think it's the great game. I think that's what
Speaker 1: really because there's all these like Kim, all these novels
Speaker 1: that you can see, you can draw it a direct
Speaker 1: line from Kim to James Bond. These novels kind of
Speaker 1: idolizing these British men of action who travel into the
Speaker 1: mysterious East and spend time hiking through the mountains and
Speaker 1: leading insurgencies and fighting Russian spies. Um. And that's really
Speaker 1: when it becomes popular fiction of the day, makes it
Speaker 1: romantic um, and then World War One kind of makes
Speaker 1: it accessible because suddenly there's a much more of a
Speaker 1: need for espionage workers and you have this idea that
Speaker 1: it's sexy, and while you had that same idea about combat. Right,
Speaker 1: That's a big reason why World War One starts the
Speaker 1: way it does is all of these colonial wars and
Speaker 1: kind of tricked young Western boys into thinking that war
Speaker 1: was this glorious, exciting adventure that gets disabused by machine
Speaker 1: guns and artillery shells. The romance around espionage doesn't because
Speaker 1: it's different, you know it is it is easier to
Speaker 1: make it sexy because you're not just charging with a
Speaker 1: thousand other anonymous guys into death's jaws. Um. But to me,
Speaker 1: this is crucial and a crucial point and understanding why
Speaker 1: later on Alan is going to be able to do
Speaker 1: what he does, because even before James Bond, we had
Speaker 1: this cultural image of that there's something extremely cool about
Speaker 1: someone like you. Compared it to combat. The difference is
Speaker 1: that combat is legal there, that that is something that
Speaker 1: is done within the law, and within that a government
Speaker 1: has declared war, you're you're operating by the rules of
Speaker 1: combat and uniform. The entire thing with espionage is you
Speaker 1: are operating outside the law, and we love it. If
Speaker 1: you are James Bond, you are murdering somebody who because
Speaker 1: they're trying to develop a weapon, and you're, you know,
Speaker 1: hitting them with a poison blow dart you fired from
Speaker 1: your watch. That is against the law. You actually are
Speaker 1: not allowed to kill people with a poison watch. It's
Speaker 1: most countries have laws against new doing that. We love
Speaker 1: spies because they go off the grid, because they operate
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, because they don't answer to anybody, they
Speaker 1: get the job done. And whether you're talking about Jack
Speaker 1: Ryan or Ethan Hunt or James Bond, to this day,
Speaker 1: we love that idea of these guys who go out
Speaker 1: there behind the scenes, off the books, and they keep
Speaker 1: us safe and we don't want to know what they're doing.
Speaker 1: And so even this show, when you talk about the atrocities,
Speaker 1: there's still some segment of people it's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's what had to be done to stop the
Speaker 1: one had to be done. And you know, I if
Speaker 1: I can get a little conspiratorial here, I think you
Speaker 1: can draw a line between why spy stories are so
Speaker 1: sexy and why the government actually does put Our government
Speaker 1: puts a significant amount of resources into helping Hollywood tell
Speaker 1: stories about like Jack Ryan um and the gangster era,
Speaker 1: because I think the fascination with spies and gangsters comes
Speaker 1: from the same place. They're both people who violate the
Speaker 1: rules of society, right, They're both people who go who
Speaker 1: are who are breaking the law, um, and we think
Speaker 1: that's sexy. There's there's a deeply embedded attitude in our
Speaker 1: culture that doing things like breaking the breaking the rules
Speaker 1: in that way and like a cool, violent way is hot. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, the twenties and thirties, people fucking loved gangsters.
Speaker 1: My cousin Pretty Boy Floyd had songs written about him
Speaker 1: and all these stories about him and like people. That
Speaker 1: was a real problem for the federal government because number one,
Speaker 1: it made it harder to catch these people that folks
Speaker 1: were so sympathetic to them. And I think the people
Speaker 1: are attracted to spies for the same reason. But it's
Speaker 1: good for the government. If people think spies are cool,
Speaker 1: it's good for the government. People like the CIA, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know how conspiratorial I can
Speaker 1: get there, because I don't think it's it's super nuanced.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's a matter of like is the
Speaker 1: same reason why the the Defense Department will and over
Speaker 1: military assets to Hollywood if they want to film a
Speaker 1: movie that's gonna make the military look good, and that's
Speaker 1: not a conspiracy theory, the Department of Defense will will
Speaker 1: demand to see the script before they'll let you shoot
Speaker 1: on an aircraft carrier. And if you've got a scene
Speaker 1: in there that makes the military look bad or in effective,
Speaker 1: they won't make you change it, and they will change it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I I haven't fully developed the thought
Speaker 1: of like the connection between that and gangster stuff, but
Speaker 1: you can read people like the director of the FBI,
Speaker 1: j Ad Grow who we're talking about what a problem
Speaker 1: it is that people think gangsters are cool. Um. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of talk about that in early movies
Speaker 1: of the day. UM, a lot of the very first
Speaker 1: police union in the country, the port Portland Police Union,
Speaker 1: put out a big statement in the nineteen late forties
Speaker 1: about how dangerous Hollywood gangster movies are because they were
Speaker 1: going to get people to think that organized crime was
Speaker 1: cool and that all these people who were who were
Speaker 1: enemies of society were actually heroes. And I see a
Speaker 1: connection between that and kind of our romance with espionage,
Speaker 1: but well and our romance with dirty Harry type cops
Speaker 1: who who first and ask questions later, and they don't
Speaker 1: let the constitution get in their way. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like there unless some lawyer let this, let this monster
Speaker 1: back out in the streets. So I'm just gonna put
Speaker 1: a bullet in the guy, and we cheer for it,
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, yeah, but it's a fantasy because
Speaker 1: that's the world we want to live in where you
Speaker 1: don't have to check with anybody before you shoot the
Speaker 1: bad people. But you can't mistake that for the real world.
Speaker 1: But in the case of like, would you as a
Speaker 1: people care about what is being done by the say
Speaker 1: in Guatemala or Iran or any of those places, and
Speaker 1: the answers, well, culturally no, because we have been reassured
Speaker 1: that these people are just out there looking out for
Speaker 1: our interests. And yeah, if they've got to torture somebody
Speaker 1: or you know, we've all seen that happen where where
Speaker 1: Jack Bauer has to torture the guy to find out
Speaker 1: when when the bomb's going to go off. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the c i A. Is having to torture terrorist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like Jack Bauer, it's like twenty four Like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: who told you that whether you decide that in the
Speaker 1: in them to see where they're supposed to answer to
Speaker 1: the people, when did you decide that it's that okay
Speaker 1: for them to operate in the shadows? Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: goes back to Dulas, it goes it does and I
Speaker 1: and it goes back from from Alan Dulas. He's inspired
Speaker 1: a lot by Kipling and you know this fiction of
Speaker 1: the area that starts to romance. And that's why the
Speaker 1: story has to start here because you don't understand the
Speaker 1: worldview he was operating under until you understand where he
Speaker 1: came from. Yeah, and yeah he was. Um so there
Speaker 1: is a fun story from his time and Burn, uh
Speaker 1: that that I think people will enjoy. So, uh, First off,
Speaker 1: this sets up that Allan Dulis was not great at
Speaker 1: his job. Um. Now, one night, while he was in
Speaker 1: Burn during World War One, he gets a call from
Speaker 1: a Russian exile living in Burn who had an urgent
Speaker 1: message for the United States. The exile insisted that he
Speaker 1: should meet with Alan Dulas that night, but Allen was
Speaker 1: going to go on a date with As he later
Speaker 1: described it, too blond and spectacularly buxom Swiss sisters, twin
Speaker 1: sisters who had agreed to a week in rendezvous at
Speaker 1: a country in and so he blows this Russian off
Speaker 1: you want to guess with this Russian guy's name was
Speaker 1: Vladimir Ilioch Lennon. Of course, there were only two possibilities there.
Speaker 1: I I so yeah, it's I mean, and like one
Speaker 1: of two things is possible either, and it's perfectly in
Speaker 1: character with what we've actually know about him. He blew
Speaker 1: off meeting Linen to go on a date with two girls,
Speaker 1: or he lied about blowing off Lennen to go on
Speaker 1: a date with two girls later to make himself seem cooler.
Speaker 1: Has there been any studies about because I've heard many
Speaker 1: men both that they had sex with two sisters. I've
Speaker 1: not known any sisters who would go out and then
Speaker 1: find a single man to have sex. That seems weird
Speaker 1: because it feels like you're wind up in a threesome
Speaker 1: with your sibling, like I'm I'm trail picturing, like like
Speaker 1: me and my brother going out to pick up some
Speaker 1: check its like, oh no, it'll be both of us,
Speaker 1: And so she can boast later like oh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: picked up a couple of dudes, a couple of a
Speaker 1: couple of dudes from from the Midwest, America. Uh so
Speaker 1: it's actually just us telling if this is just the
Speaker 1: story he told later that also want to call attention
Speaker 1: to something that may have like you may have caused
Speaker 1: a lot of your listeners kind of stopping their tracks.
Speaker 1: You said Alan was actually not very good at his job,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of people, a lot of
Speaker 1: people be saying, well, but then how did he keep
Speaker 1: getting promoted? You have to understand that America back then,
Speaker 1: it wasn't the pure meritocracy that it is now. Like
Speaker 1: like sometimes if you were born, if you, for instance,
Speaker 1: grew up where at the age of five you were
Speaker 1: having dinner with presidents, if you had enough powerful friends,
Speaker 1: you could be awful at your job and you would
Speaker 1: just keep failing upward. Yeah, we didn't solve that problem
Speaker 1: til decades later. Yeah, I mean, we had to fight
Speaker 1: very hard to completely and totally resolve that issue in
Speaker 1: our society, and thankfully we did. Thankfully we did. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So what what whether or not that story about blowing
Speaker 1: off Lennen is true. Alan Dulas would claim to regret
Speaker 1: blowing him off for the rest of his life, and
Speaker 1: he was pretty consistent about this. He later wrote, quote here,
Speaker 1: the first chance, if in fact it was a chance
Speaker 1: to start talking to the communist leaders, was lost. And
Speaker 1: that's the way he would sort of frame this in
Speaker 1: his life, like I screwed up a chance to maybe
Speaker 1: have set off U S Soviet relations on a better footing,
Speaker 1: which kind of makes me think it might be real
Speaker 1: because he doesn't. He portrays himself as being important here,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't portray himself as doing the right thing
Speaker 1: like he he constantly seems to regret it. I don't
Speaker 1: know what the truth is, right, Lennon wasn't burned during
Speaker 1: that period, so it's not impossible now. Eventually, young Alan
Speaker 1: Dulas wound up dating a check woman who had been
Speaker 1: hired by the American legation in burn and the two
Speaker 1: grew close. But then Alan was informed by British intelligence
Speaker 1: that she was working for the Austrians, using her access
Speaker 1: to the American code room to pass on information. They
Speaker 1: informed to Alan that she needed to be liquidated, and
Speaker 1: he did not blink in sending his girlfriend off to die.
Speaker 1: He took her out to dinner the very next night,
Speaker 1: and instead of taking her home, dropped her off with
Speaker 1: two British agents who we have to assume murdered her.
Speaker 1: She was never seen again. Yeah, um, it's pretty fucked up.
Speaker 1: I mean that is like spic ship. That's James Bond ship. Actually, um,
Speaker 1: having to kill your double aged girlfriend. That that it
Speaker 1: was a plot of like six of the James Bond movies. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah right, but again he James Bond is sexy because
Speaker 1: he's a narcissist. He cannot can't forget that, uh you know,
Speaker 1: and so we we worshiped that figure. It's like, wow,
Speaker 1: he's so cold in the face of the mission having
Speaker 1: to get done. You know, it didn't phace him. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: see in a fictional hero. And I not read the
Speaker 1: Kipling book, but there's an element of that he decided.
Speaker 1: It's like yeah, but he gets things done, he gets results,
Speaker 1: like dirty Harry. Grandpa Foster died in nineteen seventeen. As
Speaker 1: a result, Alan Dulas had to rely on his uncle,
Speaker 1: the Secretary of State, to subsidize his tiny government salary
Speaker 1: from this point forward. But of course his uncle had
Speaker 1: plenty of money, and so Alan had plenty of money.
Speaker 1: This enabled him to live the high life and burn,
Speaker 1: hosting parties and taking out again just tons and tons
Speaker 1: of women, only a few of whom he helped the
Speaker 1: British assassinate. Now Uncle Burt would also during this period
Speaker 1: provide Foster Dulus with his first opportunity to screw with
Speaker 1: a sovereign nation. Uh. And this is the start of
Speaker 1: Foster Dulus, who later becomes the Secretary of State, messing
Speaker 1: around with foreign politics. And I'm gonna quote from The
Speaker 1: Brothers by Stephen Kinzer. A pro American regime in Cuba,
Speaker 1: led by the Conservative Party was seeking to hold power
Speaker 1: after losing an election, and followers of the victorious Liberals
Speaker 1: rose up in protest. Violence threatened the interest of thirteen
Speaker 1: Sullivan and Cromwell clients, owners of sugar mills, railways, and nines,
Speaker 1: who had a hundred and seventy million dollars the equivalent
Speaker 1: of three billion in the early twentieth century invested in Cuba.
Speaker 1: They turned to the firm for protection. Foster took the
Speaker 1: case and traveled immediately to Washington. The next morning he
Speaker 1: had breakfast with Uncle Burt. By his own account, he
Speaker 1: quote suggested that the Navy Department sent two fast destroyers,
Speaker 1: one for the northern coast and one for the southern
Speaker 1: coast of the portion of Cuba controlled by the revolutionaries.
Speaker 1: Lansing agreed, his uncle agreed, and the warships were dispatched.
Speaker 1: That afternoon, marines landed and spread into the countryside to
Speaker 1: repress protests, beginning what would be a five year occupation.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of Americans don't know that after
Speaker 1: the Spanish American War, we sent marines into brutally crush
Speaker 1: of popular uprising and occupied Cuba. It kind of makes
Speaker 1: the Castro stuff make more sense when you have that history,
Speaker 1: which might be wh yeah, and this era of right
Speaker 1: around World War One, the context of all this and
Speaker 1: the reason why this stuff keeps coming up. The globalization
Speaker 1: of the economy is exploding at this point. But like
Speaker 1: there's always been trade between countries, of course, going back
Speaker 1: since the invention of boats, but now the total integration
Speaker 1: where you cannot manufacture you know, vehicles or wagons or
Speaker 1: cars in this country without steal from this country, petroleum
Speaker 1: from this country, you know, fabric from textiles from this country,
Speaker 1: where you've now got this network. So now whether or
Speaker 1: not the American government's interests are relevant all over the world.
Speaker 1: American employers and corporation's interests factually are to the tune
Speaker 1: of as you said, billions and billions of dollars. This
Speaker 1: is where that really becomes true. World War One is
Speaker 1: like the turning point where from that point on we
Speaker 1: are on in like a one world economy by necessity,
Speaker 1: where stuff is being shipped all over, Like shipping becomes
Speaker 1: a thing. So this concept of well, why would we
Speaker 1: care about putting down own some revolution and some it's like, well,
Speaker 1: there was a sugar mill there, as I think you said,
Speaker 1: are there's you know, a sugarcane plantation something. It's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but why would we care about that? Like, well that
Speaker 1: that plantation is owned by this corporation that's actually not
Speaker 1: in that country, but it's you know, in these corporations
Speaker 1: spanned borders, but they don't have the power to put
Speaker 1: down a revolution. So this whole thing, like it sounds
Speaker 1: like conspiracy talk when you say, well, the government's just
Speaker 1: working on behalf of the corporations, but it literally was
Speaker 1: acting on behalf of the corporations. It's not. It's not
Speaker 1: a conspiracy theory. It's the reason this stuff was being done.
Speaker 1: It was literally the Secretary of State's grandson, the employee
Speaker 1: of these business owners in Cuba who not Cuban. Isn't
Speaker 1: these guys who owned businesses in Cuba going to his
Speaker 1: uncle and saying, will you send in the Marines from
Speaker 1: my friends who pay me? Like that's how it happened.
Speaker 1: I mean people used fancy or language back then, but
Speaker 1: that's how it happened. So again the question is in
Speaker 1: his mind, was there some unified like ideology of are
Speaker 1: we rescuing the citizens there from something? And that to
Speaker 1: me is like asking to what point, to what degree
Speaker 1: did Donald Trump believe anything? He said, I have no idea.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about Foster's ideology more it it evolved at
Speaker 1: this time. I don't think he has. I think he's
Speaker 1: still the the to the extent that he's driven by ideology.
Speaker 1: It's his grandfather's right, this idea that American capitalism and
Speaker 1: nationalism are best served by forcing using our power to
Speaker 1: force other countries to trade with us and give us
Speaker 1: access to resources, right, and that that's a valid thing
Speaker 1: to use the military for because it's good for us
Speaker 1: and and this is my country. That's kind of Foster
Speaker 1: Dolus is the grandpa. Foster dolus Is ideology at this point.
Speaker 1: It's his grandson's ideology that will change. We're going to
Speaker 1: talk about kind of how what he believes alter is
Speaker 1: over time. But my guess is at this point he's
Speaker 1: still kind of believes what his grandfather believed. That's the
Speaker 1: sense that I get. Um again, if you want to
Speaker 1: read the book The Brothers by Stephen Kinzer, you listening.
Speaker 1: It's a wonderful book. Actually, a lovely fan sent me
Speaker 1: a copy of it in the mail, a hard copy. Um,
Speaker 1: which kind of it inspired me to finally say, I've
Speaker 1: been wanting to do an episode on the Dollas Brothers
Speaker 1: for a while. But but thank you person who sent
Speaker 1: me the book. UM. I hope you're listening, and I
Speaker 1: hope you're happy with this episode. Um, motherfucker. So anyway, Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Foster Dolus the Younger learned a lot of lessons from
Speaker 1: his intervention in Cuba, the most significant of which was
Speaker 1: that it was actually super easy for a wealthy corporation
Speaker 1: to convince the US to intervene and dominate the politics
Speaker 1: of a smaller nation for profit. It worked well for him. Um,
Speaker 1: for his part, Uncle Bert was impressed with his nephew
Speaker 1: and quickly sent him out on another mission. The U.
Speaker 1: S Government, which had now entered the war on the
Speaker 1: side of the Allies, wanted to purge all German influence
Speaker 1: from Central and Erica. Now this is probably prompted in
Speaker 1: part by the Zimmerman Telegram, which was a letter the
Speaker 1: Kaiser sent to Mexico asking if Mexico might be interested
Speaker 1: in attacking the US to get us off of Germany's back.
Speaker 1: There was never any chance of this leading to anything,
Speaker 1: because the Mexican government wasn't an idiot um. They'd already
Speaker 1: lost two wars to the United States. They weren't going
Speaker 1: to do it. The Kaiser, We've done two episodes on him,
Speaker 1: one of the dumbest men to ever have power in history.
Speaker 1: The Zimmerman Telegram is like the one of the worst
Speaker 1: owned goals in the history of geopolitics, like just an
Speaker 1: amazing vict gift that he handed the British um. And
Speaker 1: this telegrams existence was really all that the State Department
Speaker 1: needed to justify sitting Foster Dulus to Costa Rica, Panama
Speaker 1: and Nicaragua to funk with some German immigrants during this period,
Speaker 1: Costa Rica was ruled by a dictator, General Federico Tinoco,
Speaker 1: who had seized power with the help of the United
Speaker 1: Fruit Company, who was a client of Foster's law firm,
Speaker 1: Sullivan and Cromwell. General Tinocco was in debt to the company,
Speaker 1: and Foster used this leverage over him to convince the
Speaker 1: dictator to confiscate the property of German immigrants. He did
Speaker 1: the same in Nicaragua, whose dictator, General Emiliano Chamorro, had
Speaker 1: also been put in power by the US government after
Speaker 1: his democratically elected predecessor had tried to borrow money from
Speaker 1: European rather than US banks. That's why we overthrew the
Speaker 1: government of Nicaragua, because he wanted loans from the wrong country. Um,
Speaker 1: it's good ship. Now. When World War One ended, both
Speaker 1: Dullus brothers wound up taking part in a massive peace
Speaker 1: conference in Paris. Foster worked on laying out the rules
Speaker 1: by which German reparations would be imposed. And his main
Speaker 1: contribution here had to do with debt financing, which I
Speaker 1: do not understand at all, and I'm not even going
Speaker 1: to try to explain, But that's what he's working on here,
Speaker 1: and it's an important job, right, That's what's important to understand,
Speaker 1: the question of how Germany is going to repay its
Speaker 1: war debts is a matter of international importance, and Foster
Speaker 1: Dullus is one of the key people trying to work
Speaker 1: that out. So it's it's a big gig. Alan Dullis
Speaker 1: gets a job for the Boundary Commission, which was also
Speaker 1: a big job because it's it's good with duty was
Speaker 1: to redraw the borders of Europe after World War One.
Speaker 1: Both men spent a lot of time with President Woodrow
Speaker 1: Wilson as a result. In fact, they got to spend
Speaker 1: more time with Wilson than his own Secretary of State
Speaker 1: their uncle did because at that point their uncle had
Speaker 1: kind of fallen out of favor with the President. Wilson
Speaker 1: had a major influence on them. He was a big
Speaker 1: believer in the USA's duty to quote carry liberty and
Speaker 1: justice and the principles of humanity to less civilized and
Speaker 1: generally non white people and to quote convert them to
Speaker 1: the principles of America. Now, Wilson was a profound racist,
Speaker 1: a big supporter of the Ku Klux Klan, but unlike
Speaker 1: many supremacist white supremacists of his day. He believed non
Speaker 1: white people could sustain a democracy if quote properly directed
Speaker 1: by whites. In order to properly direct different nations, President
Speaker 1: Wouldrow Wilson intervened in foreign nations more than any other
Speaker 1: president before him. In fact, he may have intervened in
Speaker 1: more foreign nations than every other president before him combined.
Speaker 1: He sent US troops into Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Nicaragua,
Speaker 1: and even in the turbulent period following the Bolshevik Revolution,
Speaker 1: into the U s s a while into Russia at
Speaker 1: the time. Now, the USSR had just started to be
Speaker 1: a thing during this period, and the fact that the
Speaker 1: Russian Civil War was still and in fact, the Russian
Speaker 1: Civil War was still ongoing when the brothers are in
Speaker 1: this conference. The US attempted and ultimately failed to stop
Speaker 1: the Bolsheviks from winning. That's why Wilson sent in troops.
Speaker 1: The Dullest brothers came to agree during this period that
Speaker 1: communism was now the greatest threat to the kind of
Speaker 1: capitalism and the kind of democracy that they held dear
Speaker 1: over the following years. In decades, both Foster and Allen
Speaker 1: Dulas would come to see the battle against communism as
Speaker 1: the defining struggle of their lives. But Jason, that's a
Speaker 1: struggle we're going to talk about in part two. How
Speaker 1: you doing, I'm done? All right, good good, Well that's
Speaker 1: part one. That's part one of the dullest story, laying
Speaker 1: the groundwork, really getting behind him. Anything you'd like to
Speaker 1: plug up the this episode, Jason, Yes, if you want
Speaker 1: to check out the last book I wrote, it is
Speaker 1: called Zoe Punches the Future in the Dick. It is
Speaker 1: a science fiction novel. Uh it is. The title conveys
Speaker 1: exactly what kind of book it is. I don't need
Speaker 1: to say anything else. I have written several books. You
Speaker 1: can google my name, all of which you're wonderful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that evans vouchers for them, so I do. I've been
Speaker 1: reading your books, I think since I was like thirteen
Speaker 1: or fourteen when you were publishing it Chunk every Halloween
Speaker 1: on your website. Yes, now and now I'm doing that
Speaker 1: full time and then part time. M a just a
Speaker 1: podcast guest shows full time guy who had one of
Speaker 1: his books adapted by Don Coscarelli, who also made Bubba Hotep,
Speaker 1: which is which is a pretty significant thing to add
Speaker 1: to a resume. If you've never heard of me before.
Speaker 1: If you've encountered from my work, it was probably the
Speaker 1: movie or the book John Dies at the end, the
Speaker 1: horror novel and a movie they can find on any
Speaker 1: stream mean service. But that's yeah, that that that book
Speaker 1: is the reason I can write full time basically. Yet,
Speaker 1: so read some stuff theypes, read his books, and then
Speaker 1: come back and listen to more about the Dulless Brothers
Speaker 1: Part two Dullis Carter h h h h m hm