Agent 110

February 1, 2017
A doozy of a dossier on Allen Dulles and his early days spying during World War II.As recounted by former Wall Street Journal correspondent Miller (The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century, 2011), before orchestrating coups in places like Iran, Guatemala, and Cuba, Dulles was a dashing and dedicated operative for the Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner of the CIA) charged with helping to keep tabs on Hitler and his Nazi henchmen. Although officially neutral, the Swiss city from which Dulles operated, Bern, was replete with double agents, moles, and spies of every stripe. It wasn't long before Dulles learned about the powerful resistance groups within Germany and the German military itself who were bent on assassinating Hitler. One such character was the intriguing Hans Bernd Gisevius, a member of the German military intelligence who hated Nazis but also had a book he desperately wanted published. There was also American heiress Mary Bancroft, a globe-trotting socialite with an exquisite taste for danger: "Believing as I did that Jean was a Turk, I fancied myself in some mysterious kind of danger. A delicious thought." The trio formed an incongruous undercover operation sharing secrets and sex. Dulles never missed a beat as he drew closer to the Valkyrie plot to blow up Hitler inside the "Wolf's Lair" at Rastenburg, East Prussia. However, the future head of the CIA had more on his mind than knocking out Hitler or sleeping with Bancroft. Convinced that Stalin and the communists wanted to carve up Europe to their liking after the war ended, Dulles fought hard to warn the U.S. government of the coming Red Menace and craft the response that would shape America's future over the next 70 years. To augment his rapid-fire spy story, Miller also supplies a timeline, a list of principal characters, and a brief closing section regarding the fates of the primary characters. Entertaining for both its historical insights into WWII and its dramatic narrative.

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 15, 2016
During World War II, Agent 110--that is, Allen Dulles--was tasked with helping members of the German resistance plotting to assassinate Hitler and negotiate surrender. But they wanted assurances Dulles couldn't deliver about Germany's treatment at war's end. From a former correspondent for the Wall Street Journal.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2017
Agent 110 was the code name for Allen Dulles when he was sent to Bern, Switzerland, then a hotbed of spies, as a head agent for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1942. (Dulles later became the first civilian director of the CIA.) Dulles' official assignment was psychological warfare, intelligence-gathering, and informant-cultivation. What he discovered, according to this breath-catching narrative, was that the German resistance movement wanted his support in deposing Hitler. Miller, a former writer for the Wall Street Journal and author of The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century (2011), skillfully weaves a double narrative of Dulles' machinations and those of the German resistance, explaining how they intersected and where they parted. He gives readers wonderful details throughoutfor example, one assassination plot against Hitler used bottles of Cointreau because the designated bombs fitted exactly into the square-shaped bottles. The story as a whole is intriguing, but the desperately ingenious plots of the German resistance against Hitler are the most riveting parts of this clandestine history.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)