This morning, we're going to talk about three of the men who helped create the CIA.
At the dawn of the Cold War, Allen Dulles, Richard Bissell and Frank Wisner were considered daring, imaginative and brilliant. Under them, in the 1950s, America's spy agency launched audacious operations. It overthrew foreign governments, even attempted to assassinate foreign leaders, actions that are now recalled more with embarrassment than pride.
JOHN YDSTIE, host:
One of those originals, Frank Wisner, was a lawyer, a World War II spy, and a man who by the end of the 1950s would go mad. In a new history of the CIA called "Legacy of Ashes," New York Times reporter Tim Weiner traces some of the failings of the CIA today back to that founding generation. Weiner says men like Frank Wisner virtually invented America's clandestine service in the first days of the Cold War.
Mr. TIM WEINER (Author, "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA"): Frank Wisner was not interested in espionage, which is the core mission of the CIA. He was interested in covert action, making kings and breaking them, changing the world instead of knowing the world. And that got the United States into a good deal of trouble.
YDSTIE: And Wisner actually sacrificed hundreds of lives trying to do this during the Korean War.
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