Richard Bissell's secretary shifted secrets, leaving Bay of Pigs records missing
By Desmond Okafor ·
Men died on the beaches of Cuba because of plans that may have vanished after a secretary replaced original records with facsimiles for safekeeping.
Men died on the beaches of Cuba because of plans drawn up in quiet offices. They were the casualties of a calculation that failed, and the architects of that failure kept the receipts.
Richard M. Bissell Jr. was a primary architect of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA operation that attempted to overthrow Fidel Castro in 1961. For decades, the remnants of his career—the letters, the memos, the clippings—have resided in the National Archives. But a look at the file's catalogue entry records a peculiar internal migration of these documents, a process of substitution that leaves a permanent question mark over what actually survives.
Electrostatic Facsimiles
Between 1974 and 1994, Frances Pudlo served as Bissell's secretary. According to the archival description for the series titled "Historic and Oversize Papers," Pudlo spent two decades curating Bissell's legacy. Her method was precise: she removed certain documents from their original file locations and co-located them in this specific series.
To maintain the order of the collection, Pudlo did not simply leave a hole. She created "electrostatic facsimiles" of the removed documents and left those copies in the original folders. These placeholders were usually marked to indicate the original had been moved for "safekeeping."
On the surface, this looks like the diligence of a professional assistant. In the context of an investigative record, it is a red flag. The catalogue entry explicitly notes that "it is not clear if everything removed for safekeeping was eventually filed in what is now this series." When an original is pulled and replaced by a copy, the chain of custody is broken. If the original never made it into the "Historic and Oversize Papers" series, it effectively ceased to exist. We are left with the facsimiles—ghosts of records—and no way to verify what might have been lost or intentionally discarded during the transition.
Robert F. Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs
Despite the uncertainty of the inventory, the scope of the materials Pudlo gathered is immense. The series contains correspondence that spans the bulk of Bissell's professional life, touching on the most volatile intersections of American power in the mid-century.
The catalogue lists notable correspondents that read like a directory of the Cold War establishment: Allen Dulles, the long-time CIA director; John A. McCone; and Averell Harriman. Most striking is the inclusion of the Kennedy family. The files contain correspondence with both Robert F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
These names are tied to the specific failures and pivots of the era. The Bay of Pigs is cited as a recurring topic in both the correspondence and the newspaper clippings within the series. It is the shadow that hangs over Bissell's tenure at the agency. The records also touch on aerial reconnaissance—the high-altitude spying that defined the intelligence war—and the eventual resignation of CIA officials.
Bissell's influence extended beyond the agency's covert actions. The records track his early work with the European Recovery Plan, better known as the Marshall Plan, and his time with the Ford Foundation. Even the personal nature of the archive's assembly is evident; one folder is titled "ECA - Newspaper Clippings Saved by Mother," documenting his time with the Economic Cooperation Administration.
The Samuel Clemens House
There is a jarring contrast in the files between the geopolitical and the mundane. Beside the records of failed invasions and Senate investigations, the catalogue notes clippings regarding Bissell's childhood in the Samuel Clemens house in Hartford, Connecticut. There are files on the settling of Howard Hughes' estate and the retirement of General George C. Marshall.
This juxtaposition is typical of the men who ran the early CIA—the belief that the management of a private estate or a childhood memory was as pertinent to the record as the management of a foreign government.
The series also captures the moment the agency's secrecy began to crack. The clippings include documentation of the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities—the Church Committee. This was the first time the American public saw the machinery of its own intelligence community laid bare, and Bissell's files reflect his interest in how that exposure played out in the press.
But for all the names and the high-stakes topics, the most important detail remains the one provided by the archivists: the uncertainty. The catalogue entry confirms that Pudlo continued adding obituaries to the clippings after Bissell's death in 1994, continuing her work through 1995. Yet, the gap remains. We know that facsimiles were left in place of originals, and we know that the originals were moved for "safekeeping."
We simply do not know if the safekeeping was complete, or if some of the most sensitive intersections between Richard Bissell and the men he served vanished in the shuffle.