Police assistance projects overseas had been established by the Eisenhower administration, but military intervention and covert action by the CIA was the primary method of addressing communist groups and other subversives in poor and recently decolonised countries. In the 1950s and 60s, covert action was increasingly unsuccessful, the most infamous example being the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion. Already a proponent of modernization theory and international development programs as an alternative method of combating the spread of Communism, Kennedy was receptive to the efforts of national security advisor Robert W. Komer to grow police assistance and make it the primary agent of counterinsurgency. Komer considered the police to be “more valuable than Special Forces in our global counter-insurgency efforts” and more cost-effective in that they did not require the expensive equipment and weaponry that military forces did. He described them as more successful as a preventative measure than any other program, providing "the first line of defense against demonstrations, riots and local insurrections. Only when the situation gets out of hand (as in South Vietnam) does the military have to be called in". Police were, as USAID director David Bell put it, "a most sensitive point of contact between the government and people, close to the focal points of unrest, and more acceptable than the army as keepers of order over long periods of time. The police are frequently better trained and equipped than the military to deal with minor forms of violence, conspiracy and subversion".