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Dulles's mistress befriended Paine's mother
Dulles on the commission
Allen Dulles, the former director of the CIA, sat on the commission even though President Kennedy had fired him after the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy had wanted to shatter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds, and he believed Dulles wanted to drag the US into a war with Cuba, which the CIA tried over and over.
The Swiss spy
During the war, Dulles ran an agent in Switzerland named Mary Bancroft. She was his spy and his mistress, and for more than 40 years her best friend was Ruth Forbes Paine Young, Michael Paine's mother. The two women traveled together and vacationed together.
The letter
While Dulles sat on the commission, Bancroft wrote him a letter reminding him how well she knew Michael Paine's mother. That letter wasn't in the Warren Report. It was found 40 years later.
Why did Kennedy fire Allen Dulles?
The Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 was a CIA plan to land about 1,400 Cuban exiles on Cuba's southern coast. It collapsed within three days, and more than 1,100 of the exiles were captured. Dulles had directed the CIA since 1953, and he left the agency after Kennedy asked for his resignation that November.
How did Dulles run spies from Switzerland?
Dulles headed the Office of Strategic Services station in Bern from November 1942 to the end of the war. From neutral Switzerland he gathered intelligence on Germany and built contacts with German opponents of Hitler. In spring 1945 he took part in secret talks called Operation Sunrise with a senior SS general in Italy. Those talks led to the surrender of German forces in northern Italy, which took effect on May 2, 1945.
How was the Warren Commission put together?
President Johnson created the commission by executive order on November 29, 1963, and named seven members. Chief Justice Earl Warren chaired it, joined by senators Richard Russell and John Sherman Cooper, representatives Hale Boggs and Gerald Ford, former CIA director Allen Dulles, and former World Bank president John McCloy. Dulles was the only member with intelligence experience. The commission delivered its report on September 24, 1964.
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