Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation- Volume 2- Part 1

principal protagonist in the Department of State.
Despite this, however, he was a man who, in retro-
spect at any rate, was held in the highest regard
by both Richard Bissell, the DDP, and Jake Esterline,
Chief, WH/4.*
While Tom Mann would continue to be embroiled
in the Agency's relations with Guatemala, the United
* In an Oral History Interview with the author in the
fall of 1975, Esterline had the following comments to
make about Mr. Mann:
If you discussed a project in general
terms and he didn't like it, he would tell
you, but if you could bring him around
to the point where he said, "well, go a-
head and do it, but be damn sure that you
do it all out," that would be the end of
it. I think he was one of these who felt
that the prestige of the United States was
getting very thin in the hemisphere -- in
the sense of relating it to our gunboat
diplomacy days ... when we could of sort
of rape the lock and there would be no
problem with it. I think that he felt
that the odds of being able to put every-
thing into it were very sli~i but, again,
when he finally realized what the alterna-
tives were, he finally said, "Well, if this
is it, then let's do that plan, and let's
go the whole way on it." I had many go-
arounds with Tom on something until I
. finally got him to agree, or he said,
"I am not going to agree." In this case
he finally agreed. No, it would be very
hard to fault Tom on the thing.2£!
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