The Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency has released to Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity some 7,800 doc­u­ments cov­er­ing the career of Allen W. Dulles, the agency’s longest-serving direc­tor, which now can be viewed online at http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/st74cq497.

Dulles (1893–1969), a Prince­ton alum­nus who headed the CIA from 1953 to 1961, was renowned for his role in shap­ing U.S. intel­li­gence oper­a­tions dur­ing the Cold War. Last March, the CIA released to Prince­ton a col­lec­tion of let­ters, mem­o­randa, reports and other papers — some still redacted — that the agency had removed from Dulles’ papers after his death and before their trans­fer to the Uni­ver­sity in 1974.

“These mate­ri­als, long estranged from the Allen Dulles Papers, help round out the doc­u­men­tary legacy of Dulles and his piv­otal role in Amer­i­can intel­li­gence his­tory. The mate­r­ial related to his espi­onage work dur­ing World War II is espe­cially illu­mi­nat­ing,” said Daniel Linke, cura­tor of Pub­lic Pol­icy Papers at the See­ley G. Mudd Man­u­script Library, which houses the Dulles Papers. The CIA retains many doc­u­ments related to Dulles’ time as head of that agency, but Linke noted that those released “pro­vide insight into not only Dulles, but the clas­si­fi­ca­tion process and, in my opin­ion, its short­com­ings. Schol­ars review­ing some of this mate­r­ial will scratch their heads and won­der why the agency thought it nec­es­sary to restrict some of these doc­u­ments for decades.”

The Allen W. Dulles Dig­i­tal Files released to Prince­ton con­tain scanned images of pro­fes­sional cor­re­spon­dence, reports, lec­tures and admin­is­tra­tive papers cov­er­ing Dulles’ tenure with the Office of Strate­gic Ser­vices (OSS) — a U.S. intel­li­gence agency cre­ated dur­ing World War II and fore­run­ner of the CIA — as well as his career with the CIA and his retire­ment. The CIA culled these doc­u­ments from Dulles’ home office, and the agency main­tains the originals.

The col­lec­tion includes cor­re­spon­dence and nar­ra­tive state­ments doc­u­ment­ing Dulles’ activ­i­ties dur­ing World War II, espe­cially relat­ing to the work of indi­vid­u­als involved in the war effort in Europe. The files also include more than 1,000 war telegrams from the OSS office to Wash­ing­ton, D.C. Doc­u­ments from the 1950s and 1960s deal almost exclu­sively with the Cold War, mostly focus­ing on intel­li­gence and the Soviet Union along with some cov­er­ing Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the Com­mu­nist threat in the United States. Items relat­ing to Dulles’ time with the CIA have been heav­ily redacted, obscur­ing the names of cor­re­spon­dents as well as indi­vid­u­als and events men­tioned in reports and letters.

These dig­i­tal files com­ple­ment the Allen W. Dulles Papers main­tained by Mudd Library. More infor­ma­tion on that col­lec­tion can be found at <arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/736664491>.

Dulles earned a bachelor’s degree in 1914 and a master’s degree in 1916 from Prince­ton, both in pol­i­tics, and received an hon­orary doc­tor­ate in 1957. He was a vet­eran of the OSS and served as chief of its Bern, Switzer­land, office. His suc­cesses there led to Dulles being named chair­man of an intel­li­gence review com­mit­tee in 1948 that faulted the orga­ni­za­tion of the then-fledgling CIA. In 1950, he was named the CIA’s deputy direc­tor of plans, the agency’s covert oper­a­tions arm, and in 1951, he became the CIA’s deputy direc­tor. After the Novem­ber 1952 elec­tion, Pres­i­dent Eisen­hower appointed Dulles as CIA director.

His brother, John Fos­ter Dulles (a 1908 Prince­ton grad­u­ate), served as Eisenhower’s sec­re­tary of state, and the two men worked closely dur­ing their joint ser­vice. The CIA under Dulles’ lead­er­ship estab­lished the dual pol­icy of col­lect­ing intel­li­gence through a wide vari­ety of means, as well as tak­ing direct action against per­ceived threats.

Dulles’ notable achieve­ments in intel­li­gence gath­er­ing included the devel­op­ment of the U-2 spy plane pro­gram, the recruit­ment of Soviet Lieu­tenant Gen­eral Pyotr Popov as a U.S. spy, and the tap­ping of a sen­si­tive East Berlin phone junc­tion by tun­nel­ing under the Berlin Wall. The CIA’s direct actions dur­ing Dulles’ tenure included notable suc­cesses and fail­ures. CIA oper­a­tives orches­trated the over­throw of the gov­ern­ment of Iran in 1953 and Jacob Arbenz’s regime in Guatemala in 1954. How­ever, efforts to oust Fidel Cas­tro from Cuba fol­low­ing his rise to power con­sisted of a series of fail­ures cul­mi­nat­ing in the dis­as­trous Bay of Pigs inva­sion in April 1961. Dulles retired shortly thereafter.

In retire­ment, Dulles wrote books (includ­ing two auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal works) about his career in intel­li­gence and appeared on numer­ous tele­vi­sion pro­grams to dis­cuss for­eign pol­icy. He was called to pub­lic ser­vice once again in 1963, when he was named to the War­ren Com­mis­sion that inves­ti­gated the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy. His con­nec­tion to the CIA and its activ­i­ties in Cuba would fuel later spec­u­la­tion about pos­si­ble U.S. gov­ern­ment com­plic­ity in Kennedy’s assassination.

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion on the See­ley G. Mudd Man­u­script Library can be obtained at <www.princeton.edu/mudd>.