Stephen Kinzer, former New York Times bureau chief in Istanbul and author of the new book “The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War,” sat down with Keenan Duffey, president of the Middle East Discussion Group at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, for a discussion of the role the Dulles brothers played in the Middle East.
Was Allen Dulles’ early dementia to blame for the Bay of Pigs?
A few weeks ago in Guatemala, I participated in a long-overdue commemoration. September 14 was the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of President Jacobo Árbenz, a former army officer who was elected in 1950, then ousted in 1954 in a coup organized by the CIA, and replaced by a military junta. His name has been taboo in Guatemala for most of the time since then. Many in the ruling elite still consider the causes he championed—land reform above all—repugnant and mortally dangerous. September’s commemoration included speeches, conferences, and a vote by the city council in Quetzaltenango, where Árbenz was born in 1913, to name the local airport in his honor.
This site is dedicated to the work of author and journalist Stephen Kinzer, who the Washington Post has placed “among the best in popular foreign policy storytelling.”