A hundred times in his career at Sullivan and Cromwell Foster Dulles did what Sullivan
and Cromwell lawyers were hired to do that was not a law firm like a you assume what
that phrase means it had a specialty they could do things like represent you in court
or draw up a contract like other law firms but that's not their specialty nobody hired
them for that Sullivan and Cromwell had a distinct specialty which was forcing small
countries to do what big American companies wanted them to do and that's why every major
American multi national corporation hired Sullivan and Cromwell whenever you had a problem
in a country they would go fix it that was what you hired them for uh Foster Dulles and
his brother did this countless times and I just used this one example uh at the very
beginning of Foster Dulles' career when he was still a young lawyer at Sullivan and Cromwell
in nineteen seventeen uh there had been an election in Cuba uh the liberal party which
was much more popular had won the election and the incumbent conservatives had lost but
the conservatives favored granting American corporations all the privileges they wanted
and the liberals favored limiting the amount of land that foreign companies could own so
some of that land could be divided up and given to poor Cuban families that's why they
won the election so the corporations American corporations told their friends in government
in Cuba don't leave office we know you lost the election but ignore that stay in power
because we don't want the liberals in the liberals then began a rebellion the companies
then went to Sullivan and Cromwell they said we have a problem in Cuba we've hired you
to solve our problems get rid of this rebellion so John Foster Dulles got the case the next
morning he got on the train in New York and he went to Washington to see uncle Bert uncle
Bert was know to the rest of us as the Secretary of State Robert Lansing he went to see his
uncle and explained the situation the uncle said what should we do and young Foster said
well I think we should send uh some war ships to Cuba to put down that rebellion the next
day two American war ships were uh sent to Cuba they landed five thousand troops they
put down the liberal rebellion the liberals figured there was no reason no point in fighting
against the US military that began a five year occupation of Cuba all intended to be
sure Cuba was stable for American corporations now of course Foster Dulles would have left
thinking I did my job I served the companies interest and it all worked out but if you
look at what happened in Cuba decades later and look what has happened to Cuba in recent
decades it didn't all work out actually Cubans got very angry about that and they couldn't
do anything in nineteen fourteen or in nineteen seventeen or in the twenties and thirties
and forties but in the fifties Cuba finally exploded and became uh came under the leadership
of a radically anti American regime why was it so radically anti American all you have
to do is look back and see the history of American interventions there including this
one led by Foster Dulles when he was a private lawyer and you understand why they began to
feel that independent Cuba can never be achieved unless it's done in a way that reduces American
influence and so you're speaking of Castro of course exactly Castro was the long term
result of all of our interventions in Cuba in fact when uh in eighteen ninety eight we
promised to allow Cuba to become independent as soon as they got free of Spain then we
changed our mind sixty years later when Castro took over in his very first speech he said
this time it's not gonna be like eighteen ninety eight when the Americans came in and
took over our country so that show you that these interventions become a part of the consciences
of people and uh the inability to recognize or understand this was a real mental shortcoming
of the Dulles brothers uh just so uh I don't get some nasty phone calls uh Sullivan and
Cromwell has metamorphosed I think that's the right word uh you know decades and decades
ago into a what you would call a normal Wall Street uh law firm yeah Sullivan and Cromwell
it's still one of the biggest law firms in America but as you say it has now branched
out and uh sometimes I think uh it's not really necessary anymore to have a law firm to crash
into other countries and make them safe for American business because that's what our
government does now This excerpt is brought to you by the Massachusetts School of Law