Howard Roman - Ghostwriter for Allen Dulles
Peter Fokes
did Jane Roman know and when did she know it? Reminds me of Howard Baker's
questions a long time ago.
One sentence in Morely's article caught my eye:
"I knew that her late husband, Howard Edgar Roman, had been a respected
agency hand."
Is this the same Howard Roman who helped Allen Dulles write his books?
In his book, Allen Dulles: Master of Spies, James Srodes describes Howard
Roman's close relationship with Allen Dulles.
<quote>
"Then an enduring partnership was formed between Dulles and a CIA official
named Howard Roman, who had retired from the agency to become a
novelist--like Howard Hunt and numerous other intelligence experts who
knew they could do better than Ian Fleming, and often did. Roman
effectively rewrote the bulk of The Craft of Intelligence. He went with
Dulles to Switzerland in the summer of 1965, where they joined old
colleagues such as Generals Terrance Airey and Lyman Lemnitzer and Swiss
spymaster Max Waibel for a reunion during which they recorded
reminiscences about Operation Sunrise. The Secret Surrender was a
collaboration with Geo Gaevernitz, who included his own memoirs and who
was active in a related scheme to produce a movie script for a Hollywood
producer. It still fell to Howard Roman to pull the manuscript together,
and, to Dulles' credit, he was generous with the royalties both books
earned. Later, Roman selected much of the material for two anthologies of
spy stories that appeared and gave credit to Dulles as the editor. Both
books sold well, but the income to Dulles was much reduced.
<quote off>
Srodes also relates the often told story of Dulles' coincidental
connections to some of the players in the JFK assassination:
<quote>
Dulles was called upon increasingly to appear on television debates on the
host of conspiracy theories that challenged the Warren Commission
hearings. He joked in private that the conspiracy buffs would have had a
field day if they had known of a number of strange coincidences--that he
had actually been in Dallas three weeks before the murder (on a book tour
to promote The Craft of Intelligence); that one of Mary Bancroft's
childhood friends had turned out to be a landlady for Marina Oswald, the
assassin's Russian-born wife; and that the landlady was a well-known
leftist with distant ties to the family of Alger Hiss."
<quote off>
Earlier in the book, Srodes discusses Dulles' relationship with Mary
Bancroft, the journalist-spy who helped Dulles during WWII.
Peter Fokes
http://www.toronto.hm/
GMcNally
> The heated debate over the Morely article has been quite interesting. What
> did Jane Roman know and when did she know it? Reminds me of Howard Baker's
> questions a long time ago.
>
> One sentence in Morely's article caught my eye:
>
> "I knew that her late husband, Howard Edgar Roman, had been a respected
> agency hand."
>
> Is this the same Howard Roman who helped Allen Dulles write his books?
> In his book, Allen Dulles: Master of Spies, James Srodes describes Howard
> Roman's close relationship with Allen Dulles.
He was an important staffer and took a major role in getting the book
published; it was, however, E. Howard Hunt who ghosted most of the
book, _The Craft Of Intelligence_.
Jerry