The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance; The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954-1974

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Sec, et NOFORl'd
Chapter 4
months as the Deputy Director for Plans, Bissell found himself in­
volved in a major struggle with Killian and Land, who were serving
on President Kennedy's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (succes­
sor to the Eisenhower administration's President's Board of
Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities). These two influential
Presidential advisers strongly advocated removing the Agency's over­
head reconnaissance programs from the DDP and placing them in a
new, science-oriented directorate. but Bissell resisted this proposal.
With his position in the Agency becoming increasingly untenable,
Bissell resigned on 17 February 1962, after turning down an offer
from the new DCI, John A. McCone, to become the CIA's first
Deputy Director for Research. 56
Two days after Bissell's departure, the new Directorate came
into existence, and it absorbed all of the Development Projects
Division's special reconnaissance projects. Only conventional air sup­
port for the Clandestine Services remained with the DDP in the new
Special Operations Division. The U-2 program was no longer con­
nected with covert operations.
The first half of 1962 was a confusing period for the
Development Projects Division. After losing the individual who had
created and supervised it for seven years, the DPD also lost its feeling
of autonomy when it was transferred from its own building to the new
CIA Headquarters at Langley. Soon afterward. Col. Stanley W. Beerli,
who had headed the DPD since 1960, returned to the Air Force. Then
on 30 July 1962, the overhead reconnaissance projects underwent a
major reorganization with the formation of the new Office of Special
Activities (OSA) to replace the DPD. The original organization of
OSA with IO division or staff heads reporting directly to the director
of the office (at that time known as the Assistant Director for Special
Activities) proved too cumbersome, and, on 30 September 1962, a re­
organization divided most of these offices between two major
subordinates, the Deputy for Technology and the Deputy for Field
Activities (see chart, page 193). The Office of Special Activities
(OSA) continued to control reconnaissance activities and related re­
search and development after the Directorate of Research was en­
larged and renamed the Deputy Directorate for Science and
Technology (DDS&T) on 5 August 1963 (along with the other
'" Killian interview (S); Land interview (TS Codeword); Richard M. Bissell to John A.
McCone, 7 February 1962. DCI records, job 80-B-1676R, box 18. folder 10 (S).
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