Legacy in the American Government 

The Dulles brothers left behind a legacy of willful blindness, with leaders interpreting facts to support their views and abusing power to carry out their agendas without proper approval.
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The Iranian coup helped set the standard for leaders to go to the CIA to carry out operations that would not otherwise be legal or practical.
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President Obama giving a speech on drone policy [The Nation]
"...It's a natural impulse of the president to turn to the CIA when they're impatient with a project and they want to get it going and they don't want to go through normal public procedures."
        -Stephen Kinzer, Foreign Correspondent

Bay of Pigs

The failed Bay of Pigs invasion was an attempt to remove the leftist government of Fidel Castro. It led to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and disintegration of Cuban-American relations. Allen Dulles was forced to resign as a result of this failure, due to poor planning by leaders of the operation.
"The operation was characterized by 'bad planning,' 'poor' staffing, faulty intelligence and assumptions, and 'a failure to advise the President that success had become dubious.'"
   -Peter Kornbluh, National Security Archive
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The Bay of Pigs invasion [Cien Fuegos]
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Excerpt from the Kirkpatrick Report, showing the willful blindness of the operation leaders. 
Click here for the full report.
"The president approved the continuation of CIA’s ‘current activities’ despite warnings from the State representatives regarding the ‘grave political dangers’ to US relations with other members of the Organization of American States."
      -Taylor Commission Report on Bay of Pigs
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John F. Kennedy [Pop History]
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Excerpt from the Taylor Commission Report. Click here for the full report.

Cambodian and Laotian Bombings

Under the Nixon administration, the US invaded the neutral state of Cambodia initially without Congress's knowledge.
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A B-52 bomber used in the bombing of Laos [National Museum]
"Until 1969 the American people, and... Congress were kept in substantial ignorance of these various American involvements in Laos." 
                  - John H. Ely, Stanford University



"The authorization and concealment of the Cambodian bombing, and the means he employed to prevent its disclosure, illustrated... that [President Nixon] was prepared to do anything he considered necessary to achieve his objectives."
               - John Conyers Jr, US Representative
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A map for Operation Menu, the bombing of Cambodia [Wikipedia]

Modern CIA Activity

Drone strikes and enhanced interrogation programs are examples of parts of the American government bypassing checks and balances in the legacy of the Dulles brothers.
"The United States has gone far beyond what the U.S. public – and perhaps even Congress – understands the government has been doing and claiming they have a legal right to do"
      - Mary Ellen O'Connell, Notre Dame Law School
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A drone being prepared for operation [New Yorker]
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Destruction of a drone strike [The Guardian]

"The [Obama] administration is misleading the public about the scope of who can legitimately be targeted [by drone strikes].”
          - Micah Zenko, Council on Foreign Relations
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Click below to view points made in the Senate Select Committee's 2014 study on CIA conduct relating to information and communication, and checks and balances. 
Click here for the full report
"The Dulles brothers turned the State Department and the CIA into a reverberating echo chamber for their shared certainties."
                                                    - Stephen Kinzer, foreign correspondent