PROPOSED HISTORICAL MARKER FOR ALLEN W. DULLES, IN CIA HEADQUATERS' LOBBY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000100050071-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 1, 1998
• Sequence Number: 71
• Publication Date: March 8, 1968
• Content Type: MEMO

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8 March 1968
Historical Note
Subject : Proposed Historical Marker for Allen W. Dulles,
in CIA Headquarters' Lobby
CIA is getting a new and prominent historical ?footnote,"
as it were, in the form of an impressive marble plaque which I
inadvertently previewed yesterday noon, in the main lobby of
the Headquarters building, and which is now veiled, for the
time being, against the day of a historical ceremony in the
near future--doubtless the 7th birthday of-Mr. Dulles on
Sunday, April 7, 1968.
It is a beautiful piece of white marble, exquisitely
carved in a relatively simple classical style, with the bust
of Mr. Dulles, measuring about 40 inches across and 24 inches
high, with the carving of the bust measuring about 10 or 12
inches in diameter. It was inserted yesterday by the stone
masons along the massive and hitherto empty north wall,
across the lobby opposite from the wall that carries the
Biblical inscription "... ye shall know the truth ...".
The Historical Staff was not consulted in the clearance,
from a technical historical point of view, of what will be-
come a major historical marker on CIA's premises. This in
too bad, I think, and a departure from a long established
precedent, followed by Messrs. Smith, Dulles, and McCone,
when the Historical Staff was normally given the opportunity
to kibitz on proposed historical items that were intended
for public consumption.
There are three major defects, I think, in this new
historical marker--defects which were noticeable instantly
to me, in the minute or two when I was standing in the lobby
yesterday, and which will surely be quickly noticed by any
discerning public-relations expert or knowledgeable historical
critic:
(1) An unfortunate sepulchral style: the deathly
white marble, in the very shape and size of a cover for a
crypt in a mausoleum. It in a beautiful piece of marble, but
it looks simply ghastly (literally); and cryptic, too, lit-
erally and figuratively,, as the critics will instantly put
it in their public comments about CIA's new monument to itself.
And in its style it may, indeed, be a traumatic experience for
the enfeebled Mr. Dulles himself, when this cryptic piece of
marble is unveiled in his presence.
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(2) The pseudo-historical inscription, 11953-1961"
is wholly misleading and, again, epitaphial in style and
appearance, rather than as something "living"
(a) The style of dating, 111953_1961," in-
scribed as it is in white marble, is taken directly
from tombstone and headstone practice, and suggests
strongly that the subject is indeed quite dead.
(b) The plaque is actually missing a genuinely
historical date, in brass or otherwise, to indicate what
particular occasion, if any, was being used for install-
ing this major adornment to the CIA building. Missing a
real date, the plaque will soon appear to have been in-
stalled at the time the building was opened --- in 1961!
(3) The literary inscription His monument is around
us." is most un-literary. (If it has any derivation in estab-
lished literature, I do not know of it, either in secular or
religious literature, U.S. or foreign.) Furthermore, it in
most inaccurate':
(a) Actually the "monument around us," if it
is the building itself that is being celebrated or de-
noted, was not only Mr. Dulles* promotion but due also
to the leadership of others as well, not least of all
the architects Harrison and Abramovitz (and Frederic R.
Ring, consulting architect, and the Tompkins-Jones con-
struction combine), all of whom have already been well
celebrated, properly and fully so, in the cornerstone a
few feet away.
(b) If, instead, it is not the building but
the organization of CIA that in the "monument ... around
us," this too is an excessively hyperbolic inscription
to it `7bullesss. Actually he was not the "architect" of
CIA, and had little to do with the establishment of CIA
itself, in 1946-47; and he was only one of several major
figures who figured in the reorganizations of CIA as an
organization, in 1948-51. His career, on the other hand,
extended far beyond the eight brief years when he was
HCI, and extended back in time to World War Is when he
first entered U.S. intelligence under President Wilson.
(c) Actually, the word "monument," which is so
prominently made the central theme of the Dulles insscrip--
tion, does literally mean, in its most common and general
and popular connotation, "a structure, edifice, or erec-
tion intended to commemorate a notable person, action,
or event" (Dictionary of Historical English and other dic-
tionaries.) The connotation is strictly of a by-gone,
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non-current, dead matter which, in the common parlance,
is "of historical interest only." The total semantic
effect of an inscription celebrating this ''monuments""
and celebrating Mr. Dulles' personal responsibility for
this "monument," is sepulchral, epitaphial, and even
apocalyptic. To the cynic (and there will be many of
them who will cross this public, unclassified lobby of
CIA in the years ahead), such a cryptic slab does indeed
have an effect that is apocalyptic and (in the jargon of
literary critics today) the musings of a "death wish."
It is reminiscent, in fact, of the thrust of several
passages of Kirkpatrick's recent book on the so-called
"Real CIA," in which he seems seriously to advance the
notion that one day there will be no need for the U.S.
to have a national intelligence service.
The phrase "His monument is around us" is inept, I think,
from a literary-historical point of view. The word "monument"
has as often as not been used in an invidious sense, when it
has appeared explicitly in literature. E.g.:
Pliny the Younger's Letters, quoting Frontinus: "a monu-
ment is a useless expense; our memory will live, if our life
deserved it."
In praise of Georgius Fabricius, 1494-1555, quoted from
Agricola's "De Re Metallica" in a translation by Herbert C.
Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover: "Death comes to all, but great
achievements raise a monument which shall endure until the
sun grows cold."
Sir Christopher Wren (see below), inscription to him at
St. Paul's Cathedral, commented on cynically by a clergyman,
R. H. Barham, (1788-1845): " ... and talking of epitaphs, much
an 5 his [Wren's] which an erudite verger translated
to me, 'If you ask for his monument, Sir-come-spy-See" (from
Barham's "The Cynotaph"). According to one book of quotations
(W.F.H. King, 1958 ed.) Wren's has been cruelly suggested as
an appropriate epitaph for certain. "successful" medical and
pastoral practitioners, as they lie in the churchyard sur-
rounded by their former patients.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1857): " The marble keeps merely
cold and sad memory of a man who would else be forgotten. No man
who needs a monument ever ought to have ones'
It is possible that the phrase on CFA's new historical
someone
rioedus") was oue Christopher
in CIA who had read the famous inscription to Sir
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Wren (who indeed was an architect, unlike Dulles), 1632-
1132, written by his son, over the interior of the north
door of St. Paul's, London: "Si monumentum requirie, cir--
cumspice: If you would see his monument, look around." But
this hardly does justice to Mr. Dulles, who (whatever he was)
was not an architect of the building and only one of several
"architects" of the successive reorganizations of CIA during
the years of his long and distinguished career in U.B. intel-
ligence.
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