made on a small island 100 miles off the Honduran coast by David Atlee Phillips, calling for the Cuban Army to revolt. They failed to do so. At 7 a.m. on April 18, Bissell told Kennedy that the invasion force was trapped on the beaches and encircled by Castro’s forces. Then Bissell asked Kennedy to send in American forces to save the men. Bissell expected him to say yes. Instead he replied that he still wanted "minimum visibility." The invasion failed. That night Bissell had another meeting with John F. Kennedy. This time it took place in the White House and included General Lyman Lemnitzer, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Admiral Arleigh Burke, Chief of Naval Operations. Bissell told Kennedy that the operation could still be saved if American warplanes were allowed to fly cover. Admiral Burke supported him on this. General Lemnitzer called for the Brigade to join the guerrillas in the Escambray Mountains. Bissell explained this was not an option as their route was being blocked by 20,000 Cuban troops. As Evan Thomas points out in The Very Best Men, "Bissell had been caught in his own web. 'Plausible deniability' was intended to protect the president, but as he had used it, it was a tool to gain and maintain control over an operation.... Without plausible deniability, the Cuba project would have been turned over to The Pentagon, and Bissell would have become a supporting actor." Post-CIA As a face-saving exit from the CIA, John F. Kennedy offered Bissell the post as director of a new science and technology department. This would leave him in charge of the development of the Lockheed A-12, the new spy plane that would make the U-2 obsolete. Bissell turned down the offer and in February 1962 he left the Central Intelligence Agency and was replaced as head of the Directorate for Plans, by Richard Helms. Bissell became head of the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) in 1962. IDA was a Pentagon think tank set up to evaluate weapons systems. Later he worked for United Technologies in Hartford, Connecticut (1964–74), which supplied weapons systems. He also worked as a consultant for the Ford Foundation. In February 1994, Bissell died at his home in Farmington, Connecticut. His autobiography, Reflections of a Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs, was published two years later. See also References Bibliography Bissell,