I've been reading the David Talbot book 'The Devil's Chessboard' which focuses on the 1950s CIA director Allen Dulles and his milieu. It got press for arguing that Dulles was behind the assassination of JFK, but I'm curious about Talbot's claims about the pre-Kennedy era. Reading it (as I suspect might be inevitable with anything written about the CIA), I'm obviously not an expert enough to tell what's a conspiracy theory, what's politically motivated misleading spin, and what's simply true. So I'm curious what the learned historians here have to say.
Firstly, in terms of generalities, are there historians who've read it have any opinions on what it does well and poorly?
Secondly, in terms of specifics: Talbot's basic hypothesis with Dulles is that his loyalties were not to the U.S. people, per se, but instead to an international class of capitalists; he was sympathetic, for example, towards German capitalists who went along with the Nazi regime because he felt they were 'one of us'. With this in mind, he makes the following claims or implications about Dulles. How many of these are basically true, or misleading, or hard to verify one way or another, or just false?
*Dulles, as a Wall Street lawyer before the American entry into World War II, played a role in hiding the American assets of German companies in shell companies so they wouldn't be seized/frozen.
*Dulles, in his post as the representative of the Office of Strategic Services in Switzerland after the American entry into the war, deliberately delayed passing on word of the Holocaust to his bosses until as late as possible, failing to pass on stories from two German industrialists who came to talk to him, and when there was information he could no longer ignore, deliberately sent it to people within the OSS headquarters who had previously shown antipathy or apathy to Jews.
*Despite Roosevelt's orders that the only acceptable surrender terms was unconditional surrender, Dulles was negotiating with representatives of Himmler to try and end the war.
*Dulles played a role, post-war, in preventing several Nazi officials from being prosecuted for their crimes.
*Dulles played a role in funding Richard Nixon's 1946 run against Jerry Voorhis, who Dulles disliked for his association with Roosevelt's New Deal.
*Dulles deliberately caused the Soviets to capture the U-2 spy plane in 1960 in order to derail Eisenhower's negotiations with the Soviets at the time.
(I gather from looking through this subreddit that Dulles having a large role in the 1950s coups in Iran and Guatemala is uncontroversial).
Firstly, I have not read this book. From a cursory reading of his sources and methodology I can tell you this is likely not a very solid historical work. Note that that has very little to do with the fact that Talbot is not an historian, but there is a bit to that. Simply, you will sell more copies if you portray Allen or Foster as maniacal, evil, shadowy villains than as other, far more pertinent evidence points toward.
I note that Talbot used interviews and materials from Allen's wife and at least one of his mistresses. That should immediately create a good deal of pause. Unlike Foster, who by most accounts had a healthy relationship with his wife (if not his sister), Allen and his wife loathed one another. Part of this was his womanising but part of it was that they were simply ill-suited to one another. Many of Allen's mistresses also quickly got over his initial appeal and came to resent the fact that he used them more as objects of sexual gratification than anything else. My point here is that if you're interviewing or using as sources two people who have a very clear reason to dislike a person, and you're not considering the various other sides to the story, your argument and narrative are stilted.
You've also pointed out something that should immediately call into question how trustworthy this book is as a source - Talbot is apparently covering Dulles's career pre-war, during the Second World War, and the entirety of his tenure as Director. His book is about 700 pages total. Keep this in mind:
Ron Pruessen, an historian at the University of Toronto, wrote what many, including Immerman, still consider one of the best biographies of John Foster Dulles. Pruessen's "Road to Power" covers only the pre-Secretary of State career of Foster, and goes to about 600. I'm fully cognizant that comparing page numbers is apples to oranges, but I don't think even Pruessen or Immerman would consider their respective works on Dulles to be "definitive" (Pruessen and Immerman both pay less analytical attention than is warranted to Foster's sense of destiny). The simple fact is that a great deal of the issues and events Talbot touches on cannot be analysed in any adequate sense for more than a very general interest perspective in the manner he's done.
Take just that final point about Dulles and the U-2 scandal. Other than being hogwash, (how could Dulles know 1) The Soviets would shoot down Powers, 2) Powers would heroically/stubbornly survive, 3) Khrushchev would choose to make a spectacle out of the entire thing, 4) Eisenhower would mishandle the affair as he did, and 5) the negotiations would be successful without some kind of international incident?), viewing Allen Dulles as motivated primarily by economic concerns requires one to ignore his consistent and continual loathing of communism (true to an even greater extent of Foster).
The thesis you state as Talbot's (that Allen was more loyal to international capitalism than "America") is also, to be kind, unconvincing. Allen, and the CIA under his direction, advocated actions which veered dangerously close to socialism (land reform in Latin America, revision of trade polices - not to be more "free" but to show greater deference to nations in need of aid, allowing the United Fruit Company to have its land expropriated etc.), and regularly pushed an agenda that, while far from pro-democratic or even paying lip-service to human rights, was in his view the appropriate means of countering the Soviets and/or Communist China.
I could go on, but basically while I'm positive it's an interesting read, from what you've told me and from what I'm able to gather from a bit of cursory research, I think this is best treated as something that'd be good dinner party conversation so long as no well-read Cold War historians are present. (And I'm not suggesting I'm even a well-read Cold War historian, so keep that in mind).
EDIT: When I made the remark about Dulles's loathing of communism, I meant Communism in the sense it was viewed by the Dulles brothers, as an atheistic, evil, predatory, oppressive political system bent on world domination, not the strictly economic sense.