The Most Dangerous Economist
When the US needed a spy plane and an invasion, it hired the economist Richard Bissell.
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In 1954, CIA director Allen Dulles recruited an economist, Richard Bissell, as his special assistant. It was the start of one of the strangest roles an economist has played in American history.
Bissell did not set out to be a spy. He did undergrad at Yale, studied at the London School of Economics, and then returned to Yale to get his PhD in, he became a professor there and then at MIT.
