Ken Klippenstein: Would you call Dulles a psychopath?

David Talbot: My colleague who helped me research the book, Karen Croft, who actually studied psychology at Stanford, she immediately began to see him in those terms and I think I came around to that point of view. He certainly would send people to their deaths without a second thought. His own power and his own ambition were the most important things to him. He tells his mistress Mary Bancroft once, much to her horror, while they're in her bedroom, how he loved to see the little mice's necks get snapped when he set these traps for them. By little mice he meant the people who he was at odds with in his spy games.

So yeah, I do think there's definitely a psychopathic element to Allen Dulles. When I was researching this book and seeing how cold and calculating and ruthless he could be, the image that kept coming to mind was the Lannister family in "Game of Thrones."

Ken Klippenstein: The patriarch in particular - the similarities are striking!