Richard Bissell

Richard Mervin Bissell Jr. (September 18, 1909 - February 7, 1994) was the CIA's Deputy Director for Plans (DDP) - the clandestine service - from 1958 to 1962, responsible for the agency's most significant covert operations of the early Cold War period: the U-2 reconnaissance program, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and the authorization of the assassination planning infrastructure that became ZR/RIFLE.¹

Early Career and CIA Entry

Bissell came from an upper-class New England family and was educated at Groton and Yale. He earned a PhD in economics from Yale in 1939 and taught at MIT and later worked in government, including wartime shipping administration. He joined the CIA in 1954 as a special assistant to Director Allen Dulles, his personal friend.

The combination of his economic and administrative skills, his connections to the scientific and industrial establishment, and his willingness to think boldly about operational problems made him exceptionally valuable to Dulles. Within two years he had become the CIA's most important covert operations organizer.¹

The U-2 Program

Bissell's most technically significant achievement was managing the development of the Lockheed U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft from 1954 onward. Working with Lockheed's Kelly Johnson and the Skunk Works division at a secret facility (Area 51 at Groom Lake, Nevada), Bissell managed the program from concept to operational deployment in approximately eighteen months. The U-2 conducted its first operational overflight of the Soviet Union in June 1956.

By 1960, the U-2 program had produced invaluable intelligence on Soviet nuclear and missile programs, bomber deployments, and military-industrial infrastructure. The program was ended as a Soviet overflight tool when Gary Powers was shot down over Sverdlovsk on May 1, 1960. The diplomatic crisis that followed - Eisenhower first denied then admitted U.S. responsibility, collapsing the Paris Summit - was a direct consequence of the program Bissell had managed.¹

Bay of Pigs

As DDP, Bissell organized and directed the plan for a Cuban exile invasion of Cuba designed to overthrow Fidel Castro. The plan evolved from a relatively modest guerrilla-infiltration program into an amphibious landing operation similar to the 1954 Guatemala coup, which had overthrown Jacobo Arbenz with a paramilitary force. President Kennedy approved the operation but insisted on removing air strikes intended to destroy Castro's air force on the ground before the landing.

The Bay of Pigs invasion of April 17-19, 1961 was a catastrophic failure. Castro's surviving air force destroyed supply ships and sank the brigade's reserve ammunition. The expected popular uprising did not materialize. Within seventy-two hours the 1,400-man exile brigade was captured. The CIA's intelligence assessment that Castro was deeply unpopular and that the invasion would trigger internal resistance had been wrong.

Kennedy publicly accepted responsibility. He privately blamed the CIA and specifically Bissell for misleading him about the operation's prospects. Bissell resigned in February 1962 and was replaced by Richard Helms.¹

ZR/RIFLE Authorization

Before his resignation, Bissell had authorized the development of ZR/RIFLE under William Harvey. The Church Committee established that Bissell had directed Harvey to develop an executive action (assassination) capability and had managed the early relationship with organized crime figures recruited for the anti-Castro plots. Like Helms, Bissell did not fully disclose the assassination programs to the Warren Commission.¹

Later Career

After leaving the CIA, Bissell worked at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) and other positions. He wrote his memoirs, Reflections of a Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs, which were published posthumously by Yale University Press in 1996. The memoir provided a careful but incomplete account of his CIA career; some of the most sensitive material about ZR/RIFLE and the organized crime relationships remained unaddressed.

Bissell died in Hartford, Connecticut, on February 7, 1994.²