Erik visits an American grave, part 1.709

This is the grave of Richard Bissell.

Bissell was born in 1909 in Hartford and grew up in a wealthy family. His father was a big insurance executive who had bought the former Mark Twain home that you can now visit. That’s where Bissell was born. He went to Groton and then Yale. He graduated in 1932, studied for a while at the London School of Economics, and returned to New Haven in 1939 to earn a doctorate in economics. The Roosevelt administration called him into the government during World War II, where he managed the shipping program to get supplies to American soldiers and allies, a critical job.

In 1946, Bissell took a job teaching economics at MIT, but that didn’t last long. The Cold War was starting, and elite men like Bissell had all sorts of fun opportunities. That was even more true when the government created the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947. So many elites would go to work for that agency and cause mayhem all over the world. Oh, it was all so much fun. As it would be for Bissell, although it took a while to get there. For him, it was the Marshall Plan that brought him back to Washington. Now, the Marshall Plan is probably the single most successful piece of foreign policy in American history: a massive program to build up the economies of other countries that put Americans to work, undermined communist parties without outright violence, and secured American leadership in the Western world for the next half century. God, I wish there was a consensus that this was the way to do foreign policy today. In any case, from 1948 to 1952, Bissell was the top leader of the Economic Cooperation Administration and then its successor, the Mutual Security Agency. On his very first day, he approved a $35 million bailout for Western Europe.

Bissell also became part of the Georgetown Set, the elite group of foreign policy-oriented men, almost all of wealthy backgrounds, who went to Yale, Harvard, and Princeton and who liked to do foreign policy while partying together. In effect, this spawned a whole generation of American foreign policy leaders, culminating in the Best and the Brightest era of the Kennedy administration, with all the mistakes these men made. Bissell was the linchpin of it all.

In 1954, the CIA hired Bissell to head up the U-2 spy plane program. He and fellow CIA officer William Miller chose Area 51 at the Nevada Test Site as their home base. This was to be his baby for the rest of his time at the CIA. The first thing the planes did was prove that the U.S. did indeed have a bomber gap with the Soviets, although the government could not share this information with the public, so it remained a political issue. When Khrushchev discovered the program, Bissell headed up Project RAINBOW to develop camouflage for the planes. He also became a major advocate in the government for the CIA’s disregard for the law. He saw technology as the future and advocated for massive funding, and if it was involved in illegal activities, or “gray activities” as he called them, well, wasn’t America worth the CIA breaking the law?

In January of 1959, Bissell became the CIA’s deputy director for plans. This was the same day that Fidel Castro walked into Havana and the CIA began making plans to get rid of him and put good guys like Fulgencio Batista back in power. Bissell became obsessed with Castro. This was the agency within the CIA that had carried out all sorts of coups, including in Guatemala and Iran. So Bissell and his top lieutenant Richard Helms were determined to use all the powers of the CIA to overthrow Castro. Eisenhower approved the removal of Castro in March of 1960. First, Bissell contacted members of the Mafia to take out Castro, offering a $150,000 payoff to the mobster who could pull it off. Of course, this also gave the Mafia cover from prosecution by the FBI, so they were fine with it. Ah, the glory of the Cold War. Can you imagine if you thought this was a good idea? Do you know who can really serve American interests worldwide? Meijer Lansky.

When the mob failed to kill Castro, Bissell organized groups of right-wing Cuban exiles to overthrow Castro’s government. This, of course, became the Bay of Pigs invasion. At first, Bissell wanted something even flashier. He believed that if the Air Force could provide the exiles with air support around Trinidad for four days, the city would rise up against Castro. By this time, John F. Kennedy was president and thought this was crazy. He told Bissell no. Bissell, along with CIA Director Allen Dulles, came up with the secondary plan for the Bay of Pigs invasion. Knowing that this was a swampy area, Dulles and Bissell thought this would force Kennedy to send in the military to support the exiles to avoid the American embarrassment if the operation failed. Well, that didn’t go according to plan. Kennedy was not a bloodthirsty Cold War man and would do terrible things, but unlike Eisenhower, he wouldn’t condone everything. The whole plan failed and it was a huge disaster for the CIA.

Kennedy fired Bissell in 1962. Bissell had initially offered him recognition immediately after the failure, but Kennedy knew this was a tricky business. He had to make sure Bissell got the right treatment, which meant keeping him on for a year and awarding him the National Security Medal for his services. But he was done. Much of the CIA itself was disgusted by Bissell’s arrogance and machinations, and believed, probably correctly, that Bissell wanted the president to commit American troops to the operation and was trying to trap Kennedy. The president offered Bissell the opportunity to run the A-12 program, a replacement for the U-2. But Bissell turned the offer down and went into the private sector. He first headed the Institute for Defense Analyses, a weapons systems think tank. Then he left that in 1964 to join United Technologies, a defense contractor in Hartford, where he worked until 1974.

In those later years, Bissell was involved in God knows what kind of behind-the-scenes shenanigans, but the private sector stuff is harder to track than the CIA. I’m sure he gave only the best advice on Vietnam.

Bissell died in 1994 at the age of 84. He had written a memoir entitled Reflections of a Cold War Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigswhich was published posthumously in 1996. Could be interesting, probably extremely self-serving.

Richard Bissell is buried in the Riverside Cemetery in Farmington, Connecticut.

\If you would like this series to visit other nice CIA people, you can donate here to help cover the costs involved. Richard Helms is in Arlington, and so is Frank Wisner. These people even rummage through Arlington. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.