Approved for Release: 2013/06/25
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Secret NOFORN
Chapter 1
16
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*Richard M. Bissell, Jr.*
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States might use against the Soviet Bloc in the event of another uprising such as the East Berlin riots of June 1953. Bissell quickly concluded that there was not much hope for clandestine operations against Bloc nations. As he remarked later: “I know I emerged from that exercise feeling that very little could be done.” This belief would later make Bissell a leading advocate of technical rather than human means of intelligence collection.²⁵
Bissell joined the Agency in late January 1954 and soon became involved in coordination for the operation aimed at overthrowing Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz. He was, therefore very preoccupied when Philip Strong approached him in mid-May 1954 with the concept of the proposed spyplane from Lockheed. Bissell said that the idea had merit and told Strong to get some topflight scientists to advise on the matter. Afterward he returned to the final planning for the Guatemalan operation and promptly forgot about the CL-282.²⁶
Meanwhile, Strong went about drumming up support for high-altitude overflight. In May 1954 he persuaded DCI Allen W. Dulles to ask the Air Force to take the initiative in gaining approval for an overflight of the Soviet guided-missile test range at Kapustin Yar. Dulles’s memorandum did not mention the CL-282 or any of the other proposed high-altitude aircraft. CIA and Air Force officials met on several occasions to explore the overflight proposal, which the Air Force finally turned down in October 1954.²⁷
Although Allen Dulles was willing to support an Air Force overflight of the Soviet Union, he was not enthusiastic about the CIA undertaking such a project. Few details about Dulles’s precise attitude toward the proposed Lockheed reconnaissance aircraft are available, but many who knew him believe that he did not want the CIA to become involved in projects that belonged to the military, and the Lockheed CL-282 had been designed for an Air Force requirement.
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²⁵ Thomas Powers, *The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA* (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), p. 79; Beschloss, *Mayday*, pp. 86-89.
²⁶ Memorandum for H. Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director/Scientific Intelligence, from Chief, Support Staff, OSI, “Review of OSA Activities Concerned with Scientific and Technical Collection Techniques,” 13 May 1955, p. 6, OSI (OSWR) records, job 80R-01424, box 1 (S); Richard M. Bissell, Jr., interview by Donald E. Welzenbach, tape recording, Farmington, Connecticut, 8 November 1984 (S).
²⁷ Memorandum for Richard M. Bissell, Special Assistant to the Director for Planning and Coordination, from Philip G. Strong, Chief, Operations Staff, OSI, “Overflight of Kapustin Yar,” 15 October 1954, OSI (OSWR) records, job 80R-01424, box 1 (TS, downgraded to S).
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Secret
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Approved for Release: 2013/06/25