The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles and the Rise of America's Secret Government

by David Talbot

Wisner had even urged that Malaxa—who had finagled his way into the United States after the war as part of a Romanian trade delegation—be deported. Wisner had served as the OSS station chief in Romania, and he considered the country his turf. He was acutely sensitive to the factions and feuds within the Romanian exile community, where Malaxa provoked feelings passionate enough to tear apart all hope of a united anti-Soviet front. Despite Wisner’s feelings about Malaxa, he realized that Allen Dulles was deeply implicated in the Romanian’s “unsavory” story. Dulles had not only been Malaxa’s lawyer, he had introduced him to Nixon. The Malaxa money trail, in fact, led in many compromising directions, including Nixon’s bank account, Dulles’s law firm, CIA front organizations like the National Committee for a Free Europe, and even some of Wisner’s own secret combat groups. The Romanian industrialist, who reportedly stashed away as much as $500 million (worth over $6.5 billion today) in overseas accounts before he fled to the United States, had made himself extremely useful as a shadow financier for the underground Cold War.