allen dulles is in the lighter colored jacket. he was director of the cia during the '50s and the period i was interested in. the gentlemen in the dark suit is his older brother, john foster dulles, who was secretary of state. when i found these guys i thought there has to be an interesting story. two brothers and i thought there has to be a good relationship and some good way of telling the story. i really dove in and discovered quickly, allen, the guy in the light colored jacket had been in switzerland during world war ii where he was a station chief for the office of strategic services and given code number 110. my interest immediately perked up. i have always been a bit of a world war ii geek and more importantly a frustrated ski bum. we lived in germany where i was newspaper correspondent and every weekend we could we would head down to switzerland and hit the slopes so the thought of doing a book that took place in switzerland captured by imagination. allen had two relatives who were secretary of state, he served in the state

there was a newspaper article written and it says allen dulles is here. e is a well known diplomat and the newspaper article said he was a special advisory for roosevelt. dulles was horrified there was a newspaper article about him but he realized if people want to believe that i will let them. he said in switzerland and here on roosevelt's behalf and we think he is really most interested in the german economy and gathering intelligence. it was very late in the war bf they figured out he was ofs. they really clung to the mistaken identity. they knew he was doing espionage but didn't know that much about his network. there was a report the germans did in the summer of 1944 and they mentioned dulles as somebody who had been working with the german resistance. >> how did get dulles get the information back to the united states so they could use it? >> that was a huge problem. they would smuggle it out of the-country to france and spain that were neutral but that didn't work well. they would transmit some things over the telephone. they knew the swiss intellig

we are talking about allen dulles before he gets fired by jfk. he would later say that he was in a meeting where they discussed at the mob and they never said anything about killing the guy. it was dulles' way of saying plausible deniability. he blessed off on the use of the mob. the cia preferred a old-school gangland style but the monsters -- mobsters refused. they had this idea of using lethal cigars. actually putting botulism toxin inside a cigar and slipping it in. they were never able to get close enough to slip him one of these botulism cigars. and then the idea of having a pen with shellfish poison. the same thing the cia had created for its youtube pilots for if they were shot down. someone was supposed to run up to fidel and stick him with a shellfish pen. and the idea that was put into production was to take a liquid poison and drop it inside his coffee or tea. in the version of a small pill. they felt that they could get to somebody who served castro's drinks and they could drop eight hell inside. this was a decent idea. the first pill