The Wizards of Langley

by Jeffrey T Richelson

  According to an NRO history, “NRO people generally lacked the CIA’s concern for processed intelligence as an end product. [Their viewpoint] was that film properly exposed and promptly recovered was their ‘product.’ The photographic content of the film was a secondary matter and one in which few had other than a secondary interest. In that characteristic lay the core of much of CIA’s professional antagonism.”5 The differing perspectives also were manifested in disputes over launch schedules.

  The CIA’s connection to the production of intelligence also influenced its approach to the development of new reconnaissance systems. General Lew Allen Jr. served in a variety of NRO posts beginning in 1965, including director of the NRO Staff and director of Program A, and went on to become director of the National Security Agency and then Air Force Chief of Staff. In Allen’s view, the engineers from Program A were “substantially more practical and realistic” than their counterparts at Langley. They placed a much higher value on accomplishing a task on time and within the allotted budget.6

  But the wizards at Langley had “a different approach to life,” according to Allen. They were “less concerned about cost and schedule” and “more concerned about bringing new capabilities into being.” They also “looked further ahead” and were substantially better in terms of new ideas and concepts. In his view, a key factor in the different approaches was the CIA’s connection with intelligence production.7

  New issues further exacerbated the relationship. But whereas Scoville found McCone’s support in such battles slippery, Wheelon found it far more reliable. He helped instill in McCone a conviction of the importance of a substantial CIA role in reconnaissance, a view McCone evidenced before the end of August 1963. In a meeting with Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric, Deputy Director of Defense Research and Engineering Eugene Fubini, Carter, and Wheelon, McCone expressed his belief that there had been a departure from the original concept of the NRO as an organization that would combine the reconnaissance operations of the Air Force and CIA under one roof but not assume direct control of them.8

  CORONA BATTLES

  The battle was joined not long after Wheelon’s appointment as deputy director. In the view of CIA historians, McMillan “made a frontal attack with a request to McCone that CIA relinquish all responsibility in regard to CORONA.”9 As Wheelon recalled, “The Pentagon observed . . . my appointment with satisfaction. They properly judged me to be quite junior . . . and bureaucratically inexperienced. They did not know of McCone’s conversion and so they moved quickly.”10

  At the time, the reconnaissance program was in turmoil. During the first five months of 1963, four of the six satellite reconnaissance missions failed. In one instance, a KH-4 launch on February 28 ended with the destruction of the Thor booster. Twice, the Agena wound up in the Pacific rather than outer space. Another time, during a KH-6/LANYARD mission in May, it failed in orbit. After three successful midair recoveries, a July KH-6 mission produced a limited success, since the camera failed before the scheduled end of the mission. In August, the second recovery capsule on a KH-4A failed to separate from the spacecraft.11

  The impetus for McMillan’s action, in addition to his preferences, included a October 22 memo to him from McNamara, which followed discussions the Secretary had with his NRO director and Fubini. The memo noted the roles of the CIA, the interagency Configuration Control Board, and Air Force in the procurement and operation of the CORONA spacecraft. The Secretary then told McMillan that he “consider[ed] the split of technical responsibilities . . . unsatisfactory, and the CORONA program will benefit in achievement of full operational potential by placing all functions under a single management system.” He instructed McMillan to establish “a single authoritative CORONA project director, to whom you can assign personal responsibility for successful and efficient technical management of the CORONA system.”12

  Five days later, a memo from McMillan to McCone noted the NRO director’s belief that it was necessary to establish “a single authoritative point of contact between the NRO and contractor.” McMillan also informed the DCI of his choice of the director of Program A to fill that role, as well as his expectation that the CIA would continue to supply security and film-courier support.13

  Rather than settling the issue, McMillan’s memo served as the catalyst for more bureaucratic battles. In Wheelon’s view, the memo “had the beneficial effect of clarifying their objectives, which had been carefully nuanced by Charyk. With the gauntlet down, we faced an early test of Mc- Cone’s resolve.”14

  McCone did not disappoint those who most fervently sought to resist any reduction in the CIA’s role in CORONA. In late September 1963, McCone wrote to Deputy DCI Carter and Wheelon, noting that he had received “continual complaints that D/NRO is directing NRO activities so that all satellite reconnaissance is an Air Force mission and the CIA capabilities in this field are being ignored.” The DCI stated that CIA capabilities in the area should be maintained and “we should consider whether we wish to recapture activities recently pre-empted by the Air Force.”15

  McMillan’s October memo was followed by a November 27 meeting between him and McCone and a December 10 memo to McCone noting McMillan’s submission of a revised directive. The revision still emphasized the need for a single point of contact and assigned the Program A director “full responsibility for the successful conduct of the CORONA project.”16

  Sometime on December 10, McCone and McMillan met, although whether McCone had yet read the revised directive is not clear. McCone spoke first, charging that McMillan wanted “to take the whole project over,” and according to McMillan, warned that “he would not stand for submersion of the project into the bureaucracy of the Air Force and that he would liquidate the NRO if necessary to prevent this.” After McMillan presented his views, the DCI agreed to consider the matter further.17

  That response came three days later, in the form of a memo, and shortly before McCone was due to travel to Saigon. He noted that in several recent discussions with McMillan, he had emphasized that both CIA and Air Force resources related to overhead reconnaissance should be preserved, including the “unique contractor capabilities which have been developed at the insistence of the CIA.” He complained that, according to several sources, “major contractors no longer feel free to meet with CIA officials and discuss problems . . . without first securing Air Force permission.” Such a limitation, McCone charged, would violate the basic tenet of the NRO agreement providing for full utilization of CIA and Air Force resources. He therefore requested that in the following week, McMillan make it “abundantly clear” to the NRO and Program A staffs that “any remark which carried the above policy implications should be corrected forthwith.”18

  As a means of obtaining the CIA’s agreement to transfer responsibility for CORONA to the Air Force, Fubini proposed a deal—in exchange for acquiescing to the transfer, the CIA would be assigned responsibility for development of the next-generation search system. But McMillan disliked the idea, characterizing it as “the trade of a major development responsibility for the job of cleaning up a stinking mess (i.e. CORONA).” McMillan would not agree until “he was satisfied CIA has the development capabilities,” and he expressed his fear that “CIA lack of responsiveness to DNRO on such a program is a serious possibility.”19

  In February, McMillan, in responding to the 1963 CORONA problems, which continued with a launch failure in November, tried again. In another memo to McCone, he stated that “the Government’s management of this project is a significant factor contributing to the unsatisfactory record of recent performance.” He informed the DCI that he had issued a directive requiring “all proposed changes and all significant engineering efforts to be referred to me prior to implementation.” The procedures were to be interim ones.20

  The following month, in a memo to McCone, Wheelon noted two requests from McMillan that the CIA concur in the transfer of the element of the Space Systems Division (of the Air Force Systems Command), which ha
ndled CORONA matters, to Program A. Wheelon informed his boss that new information indicated the unit was about to be dissolved and its responsibilities re-created under Program A and that the “program is being transferred to [Program A] without our concurrence.”21

  Five months later, the issue was still an irritant. On August 28, Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance assured Deputy DCI Marshall Carter that a portion of a McMillan memo regarding a meeting earlier that month was not taken as concurrence in transferring the contracting responsibility for the CORONA payload from the CIA to the Air Force. “Quite to the contrary,” Vance wrote, “it was read to show that there was no agreement on this subject as between Mr. McCone and me.”22

  Less pleasing to some CIA officials was a letter from Vance to McCone on October 15 in which Vance noted their agreement earlier that month that “there will be a single authoritative representative of the Government for technical direction on the entire CORONA system.” That representative, Vance noted, would be the head of Program A. Wheelon received a memo characterizing Vance’s note as “a real beaut . . . a classic example of de facto negotiation.” The key point of contention was, still, which agency was responsible for the CORONA payload and issuing technical directives to the contractors on the subject.23

  The following month, Jack Ledford, head of the Office of Special Activities, noted: “In two years, the payload responsibility and direction of the CORONA Program has not been resolved. While the NRO and Director, Program A are of the view that they are directing the entire CORONA Program, the Agency still maintains its view that the Agency is responsible for payload management. There have been no formal decisions clarifying this difference of opinion.”24

  On November 17, McCone wrote Vance that at the September 1 NRO Executive Committee meeting (consisting of McCone, Vance, Fubini, and McMillan) “it was agreed that CIA would continue its present responsibility in contracting for all elements of the CORONA payload.”25 That same day a draft of a letter from Carter to McMillan noted areas where the CIA and NRO appeared to be in “complete agreement.” Those areas included the need for a “single authoritative program manager for CORONA,” who would exercise “over-all technical direction of the program and be responsible to the DNRO for its successful prosecution, who is in turn responsible to Mr. McCone and Mr. Vance.” In addition, Carter believed they had agreed that the CIA would continue, under the auspices of the NRO, to handle the Advanced Projects facility at Palo Alto, the camera programming function, and the systems integration contract with Lockheed. Also, the CIA would serve as project manager for the CORONA payload.26

  The continuing battle was the subject of memos from McCone and McMillan in April and June 1965. On April 21, McCone gave explicit instructions to Wheelon that the CORONA contracts with Lockheed (systems integration), General Electric (reentry vehicle), and Itek (camera) should clearly establish that CIA had the responsibility and authority to provide technical direction for the CORONA payload.27

  In June, McMillan charged that the CIA had not complied with terms of an agreement reached by McCone and Vance in August concerning the systems engineering and systems integration functions. McMillan’s memo alleged that a CIA employee instructed Lockheed personnel not to sign an essential contract due to security issues. Despite resolution of those issues as well as discussions with the DCI, and a written request from McMillan to the Deputy DCI, the CIA injunction against signing this contract had not been lifted.28

  Launch scheduling also proved an irritant. In the view of CIA officials, the heart of the issue was Program A’s detachment from intelligence production. A CIA memo noted that “Personnel from the NRO Staff and Program A who are divorced from the intelligence mission are more interested in launch schedules and recoveries than in the quality of the photography.” It mentioned a meeting in February between Col. Frank Buzard of the NRO staff and a CIA representative during which Buzard reportedly stated that sixteen CORONA launches had been scheduled by the DNRO for 1965 and those launches would take place according to the established schedule. The CIA representative responded that “CORONA was an intelligence reconnaissance program and that the missions would be flown in response to intelligence requirements, not in response to pre-established Air Force launch schedules.”29

  Harsh words were also exchanged in 1965 over allegations that the CIA had been withholding data from the Air Force concerning orbiting CORONA payloads. On March 24, McCone placed an urgent call to Vance requesting that he see Carter as soon as possible. At their meeting the next day, Carter told the Deputy Defense Secretary that allegations by McMillan about the CIA withholding information concerning the functioning of the CORONA payload required to conduct launch or recovery operations were baseless. Carter assured Vance that all information on the condition and operation of the payload and the payload section of the vehicle that bore on the decision to de-orbit was provided immediately to Air Force representatives. Carter added that he believed such accusations were “just another attempt to get CIA completely out of the satellite business.”30 Carter then went to see McMillan, who had put in a call for him, for a much less amicable meeting. He gave McMillan a fact sheet on the allegations. It asserted that the CIA had provided the Air Force with “more, repeat more, operational data on the payload” since August 1964 than at any time prior to that date. According to Carter, McMillan became “visibly disturbed” and confirmed that the allegations were misleading.31

  Carter told the NRO director that it was apparent to him that “there was a clear-cut effort to run CIA out of the satellite business and make this critical intelligence collection system a complete blue-suit operation.” According to Carter, McMillan then attempted to reopen the entire matter, suggesting that the Air Force should receive all the basic telemetry and calibration data. Carter told him that he “would not have it,” and had no intention of establishing or allowing to be established a separate diagnostic, analytical function by an agency having no responsibility for the payload.”32

  Matters worsened when McMillan asked Carter to agree that detailed results of the payload telemetry analysis would be provided to the Air Force Satellite Test Center. Carter ignored the exact phrasing, stating that he saw no reason why the results of the analysis should not be made available, but before giving firm agreement, he wished to consult with his staff. McMillan lashed out, saying he had “the impression that McCone and you are captives of your staff and unable to make decisions.” Carter fired back, telling McMillan that “he would do well to learn how to use a staff himself as well as exerting some caution in his use of the English language.” Carter closed his memo describing the meeting by noting that “while we have clearly won this skirmish, the battle will continue so long as McMillan, [Col. Paul] Worthman, Buzard, . . . are in the act.”33

  EAVESDROPPING FROM SPACE

  One day in 1966, Robert Mathams and three other men drove out into the Australian outback, about twelve miles from Alice Springs. They passed through some low hills, took seats on the ground, and opened a case of red wine. A toast followed. At the time, Mathams was head of the Scientific Intelligence Group of Australia’s Joint Intelligence Bureau. Joining Mathams in the toast were Bud Wheelon and his deputy, Carl Duckett, and Leslie Dirks, another key DS&T staff member. The celebration concerned the selection of the site for the ground station for a new type of intelligence satellite—a satellite that had its genesis in a newspaper article that appeared in the summer of 1963.34

  Not long after becoming head of the DS&T, Wheelon was reading a story in the New York Herald Tribune about Syncom, a NASA-DODHughes satellite program. The article discussed what was then a revolutionary means of communications, first suggested by science and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, that allowed communications far beyond the horizon—signals were transmitted from a ground station to a satellite and then back down to another ground station.35

  The Syncom satellites were not low-earth orbiters whizzing around the earth and thus out of view of one or both gro
und stations for substantial periods of time. Instead, they flew 22,300 miles above various points on the equator—in geostationary orbit. At that altitude and location, the satellites revolved around the earth at the same speed as the earth turned on its axis. In effect, they hovered over a single point on the equator. In addition, at their high altitude, about one-third of the earth was in view of each satellite. Such satellites thus represented an efficient and always available means of shuttling communications across large portions of the planet. It occurred to Wheelon that it might be possible to employ such an approach to intercept signals from key targets and relay them to a U.S. ground station.36

  Targets might include telemetry signals from Tyuratam, Plesetsk, the White Sea, and even Sary Shagan, which was located far enough in the Soviet interior to be immune from U.S. land- and air-based eavesdropping efforts. A geosynchronous intercept system would also allow the collection of down-range telemetry from the impact zone on Kamchatka. In addition, such a system promised to provide launch-pad telemetry from all the sites, which would provide better estimates of thrust and warhead capability.37

  Wheelon assembled some key CIA officials to explore such ideas—including George Miller, chief of the Office of ELINT; Carl Nelson, from the Office of Communications; and Leslie Dirks, who had joined the CIA in 1961 after obtaining a B.S. from MIT in 1958 and a research degree from Oxford University in 1960.38 Also brought into the discussions was Lloyd K. Lauderdale, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy with a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins. A veteran of OSI’s defensive systems division, he had experienced the frustration of trying to understand the Soviet ABM program with its main test center at Sary Shagan.39