"NICK FURY AND THE FALL OF S.H.I.E.L.D."
I feel that characters like Phil Coulson and Steve Rogers should kneel down and kiss Nicholas J. Fury’s ass for his actions in "CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER". Why? Because his actions before, during and after the 2014 movie prevented terrorist groups like HYDRA and an Inhumanity community called Afterlife to create more major catastrophes following the fall of the intelligence agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D. in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
In the past three years, I have noticed that a lot of MCU fans like to blame Fury for HYDRA’s infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D. Why, I do not know. HYDRA's infiltration of the agency and other organizations had begun a few years before Fury's birth in 1951. In fact, a scene in "CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER" made it perfectly clear how HYDRA managed to infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D. The newly formed agency had recruited HYDRA scientist Arnim Zola and a few other to form a think tank under the program known as Operation Paperclip. As many know, this program allowed S.H.I.E.L.D. and other intelligence services to recruit Nazi (or HYDRA) scientists for the benefit of their countries around the start of the Cold War. The 2014 movie also made it clear who had founded S.H.I.E.L.D. around this time - U.S. Army Colonel Chester Phillips, Peggy Carter and Howard Stark.
Not only were Phillips, Carter and Stark responsible for Operation Paperclip; which allowed Arnim Zola to join S.H.I.E.L.D. and kick start HYDRA’s infiltration of the agency; they allowed this infiltration to grow for . . . how many decades? And even following Chester Phillips' death, Howard and Peggy allowed HYDRA mole Mitchell Carson to become the Head of Defense of S.H.I.E.L.D. Another HYDRA mole who eventually became part of S.H.I.E.L.D. was a former State Department diplomat named Alexander Pierce. Following Howard’s death and Peggy’s retirement, Pierce became Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and later, the World Security Council’s Secretary. As Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., Pierce made one major mistake. He promoted Fury, whom he had first met while serving the State Department in Bogota, to the position of the agency’s new director after he joined the World Security Council.
Project Oversight was a S.H.I.E.L.D. program that involved three heavily armed, satellite-linked Helicarriers designed to proactively strike out against potential threats - usually humans- before they actually happened. I do not know who was originally responsible for the creation of this program - Pierce or Fury. Pierce wanted to use the helicarriers and Arnim Zola's algorithm to root out individuals that would oppose or threaten HYDRA's goals. Fury had supported Project Oversight, as a means to defend Earth from any future non-Human threat. He had even revealed the project to a disapproving Steve Rogers aka Captain America. But in the end, Fury had misgivings about it. By setting in motion the hijacking of a S.H.I.E.L.D. ship called the Lemurian Star, Fury had an excuse to order one of his top agents, Natasha Romanoff, to accompany Rogers and a STRIKE team to free the ship’s hostages. Natasha’s mission was to download information that proved to be very . . . very important. Moviegoers eventually learned that the files that Natasha had downloaded from the Lemurian Star revealed the history of HYDRA’s infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D., Zola’s part in it and the real plans for Project Oversight.
Think about it. If Fury had not developed misgivings about Project Oversight, no one would have learned the truth about it. And no one would have learned about HYDRA’s infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D. and other organizations like the KGB, the World Security Council and the U.S. Senate. Worse, Alexander Pierce would have gone ahead with Project Oversight, which would have led to the deaths of many people. And even though S.H.I.E.L.D. had fallen, Fury once again stepped up to the bat and re-created the agency, with Phil Coulson as the new Director. Coulson and his team stood between the world and disaster on several occasions.
Ironically, instead of realizing that Fury's actions in "THE WINTER SOLDIER" had outed HYDRA and stopped both Project Oversight and the Centipede Project; both Steve Rogers in the 2014 movie and Phil Coulson in the current television series had went into rants by criticizing . . . or blaming Fury for failing to learn about HYDRA’s infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the past. Steve was angry over his discovery that his childhood friend, James "Bucky" Barnes, was still alive (after being declared dead during the last year of World War II) and a brainwashed HYDRA assassin. In his anger, he lashed out at Fury and used the latter as a scapegoat. Coulson was angry over Fury using the dangerous Project T.A.H.I.T.I. to resurrect him. His anger was more justified. Unfortunately, in the midst of his anger, Coulson also blamed Fury for HYDRA's infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D. Coulson knew nothing of Howard Stark, Peggy Carter and Chester Phillips’ roles in the disastrous Operation Paperclip. But Steve did. He and Natasha had learned everything when they first downloaded the Lemurian Star’s file at an old S.H.I.E.L.D. base. He should have known better.
But what I found astounding about all of this is that a good number of Marvel fans still continued to blame Nick Fury for HYDRA's infiltration of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the latter's downfall. If any of them had viewed that scene between Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff and Arnim Zola's computer image in "CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER", they should also know better than to blame Fury.
