Fifteen days after Licklider’s arrival at the Pentagon, the most harrowing of conflicts set the world on a razor’s edge. Photographs taken by a U-2 spy plane revealed that the Soviets had covertly placed nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba, ninety miles off the coast of Florida. President Kennedy demanded that the missiles be removed, but Premier Nikita Khrushchev refused. For thirteen days, starting on October 16, the United States and the Soviet Union played a game of nuclear chicken. At the height of the crisis, on October 24, the United States set up a military blockade off the island and a standoff in the ocean ensued. By all accounts, this thirteen-day period was the closest the world has ever come to nuclear war, before or since. The president raised the defense condition to DEFCON 2 for the first and only time in history. And yet new information from ARPA’s history has recently come to light that paints an even more dramatic Cuban Missile Crisis than was previously understood.
“Guess how many nuclear missiles were detonated during the Cuban Missile Crisis?” asks Paul Kozemchak, special assistant to DARPA director Arati Prabhakar, during an interview for this book. Kozemchak is a thirty-year veteran of DARPA, which makes him the longest-serving employee in its history. “I can tell you that the answer is not ‘none,’” said Kozemchak. “The answer is ‘several.’” In this case, “several” refers to four.
By the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Eisenhower’s test ban had failed, and the United States and the Soviet Union had both returned to nuclear weapons testing. Twice during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, on October 20 and October 26, 1962, the United States detonated two nuclear weapons—code-named Checkmate and Bluegill Triple Prime—in space. These tests, which sought to advance knowledge in ARPA’s pursuit of the Christofilos effect, are on the record and are known. What is not known outside Defense Department circles is that in response, on October 22 and October 28, 1962, the Soviets also detonated two nuclear weapons in space, also in pursuit of the Christofilos effect. In recently declassified film footage of an emergency meeting at the White House, Secretary of Defense McNamara can be heard discussing one of these two Soviet nuclear bomb tests with the president and his closest advisors. “The Soviets fired three eleven-hundred-mile missiles yesterday at Kapustin Yar,” McNamara tells them, one of which contained a 300-kiloton nuclear warhead. “They were testing elements of an antimissile system in a nuclear burst environment.”
It is hard to determine what is more shocking, that this information, which was made public by Russian scientists in the early 1990s, is not generally known, or that four nuclear weapons were detonated in space, in a DEFCON 2 environment, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Firing off nuclear weapons in the middle of a nuclear standoff is tempting fate. The BMEWS system, at J-Site in Thule, could easily have misidentified the Soviet missile launches as a nuclear first strike. “The danger of the situation simply getting out of control, from developments or accidents or incidents that neither side—leaders on either side—were even aware of, much less in control of, could have led to war,” says the former CIA officer Dr. Raymond Garthoff, an expert in Soviet missile launches.
The information about the Soviet high-altitude nuclear tests remained classified until after the Berlin Wall came down. The Soviet nuclear weapon detonated on October 28, 1962, over Zhezqazghan in Kazakhstan at an altitude of ninety-three miles had a consequential effect. According to Russian scientists, “the nuclear detonation caused an electromagnetic pulse [EMP] that covered all of Kazakhstan,” including “electrical cables buried underground.”
The Cuban Missile Crisis made clear that command and control systems not only needed to be upgraded but also needed to be reimagined. It was J. C. R. Licklider who first challenged his ARPA colleagues to rethink old ideas about what computers could do beyond mathematical tasks like payroll and accounting. Licklider proposed the development of a vast multiuser system, a “network” of computers that could collect information across multiple platforms—from radar and satellites to intelligence reports, communication cables, even weather reports—and to integrate them. What was needed, said Licklider, was a partnership between man and machine, and between the military and the rest of the world.
Of his ARPA bosses, Licklider wrote, “I kept trying to convince them of my philosophy that what the military needs is what the business man needs, is what the scientist needs.” Six months after arriving at ARPA, he sent out a memo calling this network the “Intergalactic Computer Network.” At the time, different computers spoke different programming languages, something Licklider saw as a hurdle that needed to be immediately overcome. It was an extreme problem, he wrote, one “discussed by science fiction writers: How do you get communications started among totally uncorrelated sapient beings?” Finding the answer would take decades, but it began at ARPA in 1962.
J. C. R. Licklider is sometimes called modern computing’s “Johnny Appleseed” for planting the first seeds of the digital revolution. What is not generally known about Licklider is that he ran a second office at the Pentagon called the Behavioral Sciences Program, an office that would eventually take on much more Orwellian tasks related to surveillance programs. This office grew out of a study originally commissioned by Herb York, titled “Toward a Technology of Human Behavior for Defense Use.” This study examined how computers, or “man-machine systems,” could best be used in conflict zones. The results, today, are far-reaching.
In its Behavioral Sciences Program, ARPA wanted to “build a bridge from psychology into the other social sciences” using computers, according to an early ARPA report. Because Licklider was trained as a psychologist, ARPA director Jack Ruina believed he was the right man for this job, too.
One task of the Behavioral Sciences Program was to imagine a future world where computers could be used by the Defense Department as teaching tools. This was visionary thinking in 1962, when computers still took up entire rooms and cost millions of dollars to build and operate. “Computer assisted teaching systems and computer assisted gaming and simulation studies are examples of work chosen [for] human performance research believed to be defense relevant,” read an internal ARPA report. Training President Diem’s South Vietnamese army was a solid example. ARPA sought ways in which to teach Vietnamese recruits to be better soldiers and more efficient administrators so they could defeat communism. This was arduous, labor-intensive work. Language and culture barriers added an extra layer of toil. One idea behind the Behavioral Sciences Program was that computers could one day shoulder the burden of this kind of work.
The Behavioral Sciences Program initiated a number of projects. These were programs that had a public face but also had highly classified components. ARPA secretly opened a second Combat Development Test Center, this one on the outskirts of Bangkok, five hundred miles to the northwest of Saigon. Like its Vietnamese counterpart, this new CDTC would also research and develop techniques and gadgets but with a focus on longer-term counterinsurgency goals, including Licklider’s plans for computer-assisted teaching, gaming, and simulation studies. Congress was not told about the new Combat Development Test Center in Bangkok, nor was the House Committee on Appropriations, though the Defense Department was legally required to notify it before constructing new facilities.
“Thailand was the laboratory for the soft side and Vietnam was the laboratory for the hard side, or things that go boom,” explained James L. Woods, an ARPA officer who worked at the CDTC in Thailand.
There was a bigger plan in play, until now unreported. Secretary McNamara was eager to have ARPA create additional Combat Development Test Centers around the world, something he considered an important part of the president’s national security policy of flexible response. Insurgent groups, also called terrorist organizations, were on the rise across Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. “The U.S. would need to support Limited Wars in these remote areas,” one Project Agile report declared, adding that “similar representation is being considered by OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] in other
areas of the world.” ARPA called its worldwide program “Remote Area Conflict” and hired the defense contractor Battelle Memorial Institute to open and operate two “Remote Area Conflict Information Centers,” one in Washington, D.C., and the other in Columbus, Ohio, to keep track of programs at the Combat Development Test Centers in Saigon and Bangkok and all future CDTCs, and to write summary reports and produce analyses of progress made. As early as 1962, ARPA drew up plans for CDTCs in Beirut and Tehran under this new “Remote Area Conflict” banner. The declassified CDTC files housed at the National Archives have been miscataloged and are lost. The only known copies remain with Battelle. Though the copies are more than fifty years old, Battelle declined to release them, stating that “unfortunately, it is Battelle policy not to release copies of Battelle reports.”
In Thailand, the new CDTC flourished. ARPA engineers in Licklider’s Behavioral Sciences Program office believed that computers could be used to model social behavior. Data could be collected and algorithms could be designed to analyze the data and to build models. This led Licklider to another seminal idea. What if, based on the data collected, you could get the computer to predict human behavior? If man can predict, he can control. “Much of the work is theoretical and experimental,” stated T. W. Brundage, the first director of the CDTC in Bangkok, “and for the time being is mainly non-hardware oriented.” Brundage was referring to one of the first tests of Licklider’s theory to be conducted at the new center. It was called “Anthropometric Survey of the Royal Thai Armed Forces,” and involved 2,950 Thai soldiers, sailors, and pilots. It was an example of a CDTC program with a public face but a classified motive. The Thai government was told that the purpose of the program was “to provide information on the body size of Thai military personnel,” which could then be used for “design and sizing of clothing and equipment” of the Thai armed forces in the future. ARPA technicians took fifty-two sets of measurements from each of the 2,950 Thai participants, things like eye height, seated height, forearm-to-hand length, and ankle circumference. But the Thai participants were also asked a bevy of personal questions—not just where and when they were born, but who their ancestors were, what their religion was, and what they thought of the king of Thailand.
The true purpose of the “Anthropometric Survey of the Royal Thai Armed Forces,” and dozens of other surveys like it, was “data collection and data processing.” The information was sent back to the Computer Branch of the U.S. Army Natick Laboratories in Natick, Massachusetts. “After coding the background information, all of the data were transferred from the data sheets to punched cards,” reads a declassified report. A digital profile was then made “on each of the men in the series.” ARPA wanted to create a prototype showing how it could monitor third world armies for future use. The information would be saved in computers stored in a secure military facility. In 1962 Thailand was a relatively stable country, but it was surrounded by insurgency and unrest on all sides. If Thailand were to become a battle zone, ARPA would have information on Thai soldiers, each of whom could be tracked. Information—like who deserted the Thai army and became an enemy combatant—could be ascertained. Using computer models, ARPA could create algorithms describing human behavior in remote areas. Eventually these patterns could lead to predictive computer modeling, Licklider believed.
There were other individuals working with and for Licklider in his predictive modeling programs. One was Ithiel de Sola Pool, a left-leaning revolutionary in the field of social science. Doing contract work for ARPA, Pool became one of the first social scientists to use computers to create models for analyzing human behavior. He would become the world’s first authority on the social impact of mass media. J. C. R. Licklider and Ithiel de Sola Pool put together a series of proposals for ARPA to consider. Computer models could be used to answer important questions, the men said. They proposed that studies be done on “peasant attitudes and behavior,” “‘stability and disorder’ in several countries,” and “cultural patterns.”
Pool and Licklider both served on ARPA’s Behavioral Sciences Panel, and in that capacity they examined Hickey and Donnell’s study of the Strategic Hamlet Program. “They [Hickey and Donnell] have yielded much useful information and opened up promising areas for investigation,” Licklider and Pool wrote, “but with regard to the solution of these important, complex problems, they have barely scratched the surface.” The two behavioral scientists recognized that the information Hickey and Donnell had collected on the villagers could also be used to create computer models and to predict how these kinds of individuals might act in future conflicts. “These are important tools,” said Licklider, for they can lead to a better understanding of the “inexorable flow from conditions to consequences.” With baseline data in a Defense Department computer system, the behavior of the villagers could be covertly monitored, analyzed, and modeled. This was an effective means of command and control.
But as with the history of warfare, the desire to control and the ability to control are often at odds. Despite inventive government efforts to influence a population, events occur that are beyond military control. What happened next in Vietnam had consequences that could not be undone.
May 8, 1963, marked the 2,527th birthday of the Buddha, and a group of religious followers gathered in the village of Hue to celebrate. Protest was in the air. Buddhists were being repressed by President Diem’s autocratic Catholic regime. The villagers of Hue had been told not to fly Buddhist flags, but they did anyway. The mood was festive, and a large crowd of nearly ten thousand people had assembled near the Hue radio station when eight armored vehicles and several police cars arrived on the scene in a show of force. Police ordered revelers to disperse, but they refused. Police used fire hoses and tear gas, still with no effect. Someone threw a grenade onto the porch of the radio station, killing nine people, including four children. Fourteen others were severely injured. A huge protest followed. The event became a catalyst for people across South Vietnam to express widespread resentment against President Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, who was head of the secret police. The Buddhists demanded the right to fly their own flags and to have the same religious freedoms accorded to members of the Catholic Church. When the government refused, more than three hundred monks and nuns convened in Saigon for a protest march, including an elderly monk named Thich Quang Duc. The group made its way silently down one of Saigon’s busiest boulevards to a crossroads, where everyone stopped and waited. Thich Quang Duc sat down on a cushion in the middle of the street and assumed the lotus position. A crowd gathered around him, including New York Times reporter David Halberstam. Two other monks, each carrying a five-gallon can of gasoline, walked up to Thich Quang Duc and poured gasoline on him. One of them handed Thich Quang Duc a single match. He struck the match, touched it to his robe, and set himself on fire.
David Halberstam described the devastation he felt watching the monk catch fire and burn to death right in front of him on the Saigon street. “Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring,” Halberstam wrote. “In the air was the smell of burning flesh; human beings burn surprisingly quickly. Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese who were now gathering. I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered even to think…. As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.”
During the self-immolation, somehow the monk was able to remain perfectly still. He did not writhe or scream or show any indication of pain. Even as he was consumed by fire, Thich Quang Duc sat upright with his legs folded in the lotus position. His body burned for about ten minutes until finally the charred remains toppled over backwards.
Journalist Malcolm Brown, the Saigon bureau chief for the Associated Press, took a photograph of the burning monk, and this image was printed in newspapers around the world. People everywhere expressed outrage, and overnig
ht President Diem became an international pariah.
But instead of showing empathy or capitulating to the Buddhists’ wishes, President Diem, together with his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu and Nhu’s wife, the glamorous Madame Nhu, began to slander the Buddhists. Madame Nhu went on national TV in pearls and a black dress, fanning herself with a folding fan, to say that Buddhist leaders had gotten Thich Quang Duc drunk and set him up for suicide as a political ploy.
“What have the Buddhist leaders done?” asked Madame Nhu on television. “The only thing they have done, they have barbecued one of their monks whom they have intoxicated…. Even that barbecuing was done, not even with self-sufficient means because they used imported gasoline.” By the end of summer, the crisis was full-blown. The White House advised President Diem to make peace with the Buddhists immediately. Diem ignored the request and instead, in August 1963, declared martial law.
In late October, the U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., told President Kennedy that a coup d’état was being organized against President Diem by a group of Diem’s own army generals. In the now famous “Hillman cable,” the president, the ambassador, and diplomats Averell Harriman and Roger Hillman agreed not to interfere with the overthrow of Diem by his own military. In the cable, Ambassador Lodge gave secret assurances to the South Vietnamese generals that it was fine with the White House for them to proceed with the coup.
On November 1, 1963, a group of Diem’s generals overthrew the government of South Vietnam. President Diem and his brother escaped to the Saigon district of Cholon, where they hid inside a Catholic church. The following morning, November 2, the brothers were discovered. Diem and Nhu were thrown into the back of an American-made armored personnel carrier and driven away. Sometime shortly thereafter, President Diem and his brother were executed. Their bullet-riddled bodies were photographed, then buried in an unmarked grave in a plot of land adjacent to Ambassador Lodge’s house.
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