Alexander Pierce

HYDRA

Leader of HYDRA (formerly)

*"See, I took a seat on the Council not because I wanted to, but because Nick asked me to, because we were both realists. We knew, that despite all diplomacy and the handshaking and the rhetoric, to build a better world sometimes means tearing the old one down. And that makes enemies."*
―Alexander Pierce to Steve Rogers
**Alexander Goodwin Pierce** was an American politician, the Secretary of the World Security Council, and one of HYDRA's leaders and its top undercover operative inside the United States Government, S.H.I.E.L.D., and the Council. He commanded the HYDRA forces within S.H.I.E.L.D., working to create the Project Insight that would have given HYDRA absolute control over the world, inciting the HYDRA Uprising. His plan was stopped by Captain America, Black Widow, Falcon, Maria Hill, and Nick Fury during the Battle at the Triskelion, in which Pierce was killed by Fury.

## Biography

### Early Career

Alexander Goodwin Pierce was born on August 18, 1936. His father served in the 101st Airborne Division. He went to have a niece and had at least one child, a daughter. While working for the State Department, a hostage situation in Bogotá caused Alexander Pierce to meet Nick Fury, who successfully saved the hostages, including Pierce's daughter. Pierce had hoped to win the situation through negotiation, but Fury disagreed. Disobeying direct orders, Fury ordered a military operation that rescued the hostages before they were to be killed. The episode in Bogotá caused a shift in Pierce's attitudes toward diplomacy, and soon after he was recruited by HYDRA.

Due to his achievements, Pierce was once nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. However, possibly to occult his true allegiance, Pierce declined the prize, quoting that peace wasn't an achievement but a responsibility. This action gained him Fury's trust.

### Head of S.H.I.E.L.D.

By the 1980s, Pierce held the rank of Undersecretary of the World Security Council, and ordered the release of Werner Reinhardt who was sentenced to life imprisonment by Peggy Carter in 1945. Reinhardt was released from the Rat and moved by HYDRA's moles in S.H.I.E.L.D. to his old fortress in Austria.[2] Gideon Malick saw the potential of Pierce, and considered having him as a partner on his quest to bring Hive back from Maveth, but Malick considered Pierce to be too bloodthirsty. After being promoted to Secretary, Pierce chose Fury to be the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., having been impressed by Fury's actions years prior in Bogotá. He also met Melinda May, one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s best agents.

Following the Battle of New York, accompanied by several HYDRA operatives posing as S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, Pierce headed to the Stark Tower after the Chitauri were all defeated. Once there, while Jasper Sitwell and his STRIKE operatives went to retrieve Loki's Scepter to be studied by List, Pierce demanded the Avengers that Loki and the Tesseract were to be relinquished to them, especially the latter as it had been S.H.I.E.L.D.'s property for years.

### Project Insight

*"I can bring order to the lives of 7 billion people by sacrificing 20 million."*
―Alexander Pierce
As the Secretary of the World Security Council, Pierce started to use his influence and the database that housed the mind of Arnim Zola to develop Project Insight, outwardly an operation involving three heavily armed Helicarriers and network of targeting satellites that were allegedly supposed to form a security network to protect the United States of America. In truth, HYDRA actually desired to use them to target and kill approximately 20 million people selected by Arnim Zola's algorithm, any individual which was deemed to pose a threat to HYDRA's new world order. Pierce was in regular contact with John Garrett as Project Insight developed.

Pierce had a meeting with the World Security Council discussing the response to the hijacking of the *Lemurian Star* by Georges Batroc. When Rockwell suggested that the French were involved Pierce corrected him about the fact that Batroc was Algerian before discussing how this was one attack and suggested that the Council were being threatened too easily by such attacks.

The meeting was interrupted by Nick Fury who privately asked Pierce to delay Project Insight due to Fury's need to ensure there was no risk with the operation. Pierce was at first reluctant as he noted that such a request would require a subcommittee hearing, but Fury argued that if there was a risk it would be worth the extra work. Pierce agreed as long as Fury promised to convince Iron Man visit his niece's birthday party. When Pierce learned that the hijacking of the *Lemurian Star* was actually planned by Nick Fury in order to recover the confidential files related to the Project Insight, Pierce deployed the Winter Soldier to kill him with apparent success.

Following Fury's apparent demise, Pierce had a meeting with Sharon Carter before meeting with Captain America to discuss the attack. Pierce revealed to Rogers how S.H.I.E.L.D. had captured and questioned Georges Batroc and discovered from him that Nick Fury was responsible for the hijacking of the Lemurian Star and that Fury had bugged Rogers' apartment. Pierce spoke to Rogers about his own history with Fury and how a mission to rescue hostages in Bogotá had led to Fury's promotion to the head of S.H.I.E.L.D.

When Rogers refused to reveal why Fury had been in his apartment the night he died, Pierce realized that Rogers was hiding something from him, likely meaning that his plans were under threat due to something Fury may have said to him. As Rogers left Pierce told him that he would find out the truth before he deployed corrupt STRIKE agents to capture Rogers, who overpowered the agents and escaped before going undercover along with Black Widow.

As the attack on Rogers was seen by all of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents inside the Triskelion, Pierce called a meeting with the staff, many of whom, including Sharon Carter, were questioning why Rogers had become a target. As Jasper Sitwell's reasons were not being listened to, Pierce came down in person and revealed to the agents that Rogers was withholding information about Director Fury's death which made him an enemy of S.H.I.E.L.D..

When the World Security Council demanded an update on the situation, Pierce tried to explain himself but found his job on the line. When Rogers and Romanoff's location was given away by the use of an encoded hard drive, Pierce sent the STRIKE team to capture them, only for them to fail. They were later located in Camp Lehigh, so Pierce made the call to destroy the base, with Rogers, Romanoff and the HYDRA computer program housing the consciousness of Arnim Zola inside.

When Pierce learned that Captain America and Black Widow had survived the explosion and escaped yet again, he gave the Winter Soldier the assignment to assassinate Rogers and Romanoff. During his conversation with the Winter Soldier, Pierce's housemaid Renata entered; knowing that no one could know about Pierce's relationship with the assassin, Pierce shot and killed Renata in cold blood.

Rogers was able to capture Jasper Sitwell, who revealed all of Pierce's plans with Project Insight, so Pierce gave a second order for Sitwell to be killed as well. After a battle on the streets of Washington, D.C., STRIKE teams managed to capture Rogers, Romanoff and Sam Wilson, but they were soon extracted from custody by an undercover Maria Hill.

Pierce met with the Winter Soldier at the Ideal Federal Savings Bank to make him report the failures of his mission to kill Rogers; however, the Winter Soldier was unstable due to seemingly remembering Rogers from a past life. When the Winter Soldier noted that he felt he knew Rogers from some long lost memory, Pierce tried to convince him that it was simply because he had encountered him during the Attack on Nick Fury, but the Winter Soldier remained unconvinced and seemed to continue questioning how he knew Rogers.

When Pierce tried both beating and talking to the Winter Soldier to try to stable him and failed, he tried to reason with him by commenting on how his work as the key assassin for HYDRA had helped shape mankind for the better over the years and his continued work would still help them. When this failed, Pierce ordered Winter Soldier's mind to be wiped to be ready for his next mission. He left as the Winter Soldier screamed in pain.

### Battle at the Triskelion

*"What if Pakistan marched into Mumbai tomorrow, and you knew they were going to drag your daughter into a soccer stadium for execution, and you could stop it with a flick of the switch... wouldn't you? Wouldn't you all?"*
―Alexander Pierce to Singh
Pierce proceeded with his plan to invited the World Security Council into the Triskelion to witness the beginning of Project Insight, but as S.H.I.E.L.D. prepared to deploy the Helicarriers, Captain America with Maria Hill and Falcon infiltrated the Triskelion and revealed by loudspeaker the truth behind HYDRA's plans and Pierce's true loyalty, and prompted every clean agent to stand up against HYDRA.

While Rogers and Wilson infiltrated the Helicarriers to modify their programming to change the targets from the people selected by Zola's algorithm to the Helicarriers themselves, Pierce found himself being threatened by the Council who were now prepared to stand against him. However, Jack Rollins and a STRIKE team entered the room and took the Council hostage while Brock Rumlow ensured the Helicarriers launched. Pierce tried to show Singh and the other Council members his point of view, but they refused to listen. Seeing that Singh would not stand with him, Pierce took Rollins' gun and prepared to execute him, however Black Widow suddenly revealed she had infiltrated the Triskelion by impersonating Hawley of the World Security Council by using a Photostatic Veil. Romanoff quickly defeated STRIKE and captured Pierce.

With Pierce now seemingly defenseless, he watched as Romanoff began to leak all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s files and history onto the internet for the entire world to see, however, Pierce tried to stop her by noting that if she did then her own past would also be revealed, including her violent history as an assassin. Romanoff refused to listen and Pierce noted that she needed two high-level members to finish her plan, she explained back up was coming. Much to Pierce's surprise, the back up turned out to be Nick Fury, who had survived his assassination attempt. Fury confronted Pierce about his plan and questioned why he had ever made him the head of S.H.I.E.L.D., Pierce explained it was simply because he was the most ruthless man he had ever met and was the best at his job. Pierce suggested that S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA did, in fact, share the same enemies and they needed the courage to take the step to destroy them, which Fury refused to do.

Pierce was forced by Black Widow to help her and Fury to unlock every single one of S.H.I.E.L.D./HYDRA's secrets and upload them to the Internet. Although Pierce mocked their efforts as he claimed that Fury's password had been deleted, Fury revealed that he was still able to use his blind eye under his eyepatch to unlock the system and complete their plan, much to Pierce's disdain as he watched the intel begin trending online.

With his plans in ruins and all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s and HYDRA's secrets released to the world, Pierce made a desperate attempt for freedom and executed the World Security Council members, except for Black Widow, by detonating a miniature bomb that he had given to them disguised as an access chip. He then ordered Romanoff and Nick Fury to lay down their weapons and allow him to escape to the helicopter.

As Pierce watched from the window, he witnessed Captain America's plans succeed as the Project Insight Helicarriers began firing upon each other, destroying them before they could unleash their planned massacre. Pierce used the threat of the bomb on Black Widow's clothes to force Fury to let him go. As he was leaving, Fury informed him that he would have once taken a bullet for Pierce; in response, Pierce jokingly threatened that Fury would again.

Refusing to allow such a dangerous enemy to escape, Romanoff used a Taser Disk to short out the bomb and knock herself unconscious, leaving Pierce momentarily shocked and defenseless. This gave Fury the opportunity to fatally shoot Pierce twice in the chest, knocking him back through a glass wall. As he lay in a pile of broken glass and his own blood, Pierce spoke his final words, "Hail HYDRA," and died moments before Helicarrier IN-01 destroyed the Triskelion with him inside.