Wheelon informed Helms and possibly suggested another of the directorate’s key advisers—William Perry—for the job. But in April 1967, after more than six months of trying and failing to recruit someone with the appropriate scientific credentials and finding himself satisfied with Duckett, Richard Helms, Director of Central Intelligence since June 1966, removed the “Acting” from Duckett’s title.4
Duckett lacked an academic background but he had other capabilities that proved of great value to a man in his position. He was, as former Deputy Director for Intelligence Edward Proctor observed, a good briefer, a man who, according to Dino Brugioni, “could turn technical data into laymanese.”5 Such a talent was of great use in marketing, in selling senators and congressmen, many of whom had little or no understanding of technical issues, on the need for a new collection system. Indeed, Duckett was, according to one directorate official, “probably the best marketeer,” a man who “could sell Congress anything.”6
Also crucial to Duckett’s ability to sell programs was his personal style. His experience as a disk jockey had made him a “smooth talker” who “had congressmen in the palm of his hand.”7 His smooth talk was aided by his knowledge of the lives and families of key members of the Appropriations and Armed Services committees—who in the 1960s and early 1970s determined which CIA programs would be funded and which would not. His prehearing chats with legislators were often sufficient to ensure that military arguments in opposition to a CIA program fell on deaf ears.8
AZORIAN AND NURO
On February 24, 1968, a Soviet Golf-II submarine, one of a class of diesel submarines armed with SS-N-5 Serb nuclear ballistic missiles, left port. Sometime in early March, while on a routine patrol that had taken it about 750 miles northwest of Hawaii, it surfaced to recharge its batteries, air out the crude ventilation system, and communicate with fleet headquarters at Vladivostok. Instead, the submarine imploded and sank in water three miles deep. Taken down with the submarine were its seventy-man crew, three SS-N-5 missiles, each tipped with a four-megaton warhead, and cipher material.9
After twenty-four hours of listening in vain to the assigned frequency, the Soviet Pacific Fleet declared an emergency and began to hunt for the missing sub. A dozen ships, including four or five submarines, took part in the search. The first ships to arrive in the search area were greeted by heavy snowfall, gale winds, and waves forty-five feet high. The surface ships and submarines directed their sonar at the ocean below; the subs also dived to look for the missing sub.10
Monitoring of the Soviet effort, as well as examination of earlier intercepted communications, led U.S. intelligence analysts to conclude that the sub was lost and that the Soviet navy had no solid idea where it sank. The U.S. Navy, on the other hand, had at least the rough coordinates for the site. That information came from the Navy’s Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS), a network of over twenty underwater hydrophone arrays that could pick up the sound generated by a variety of underwater activities—including that of submarines. The acoustic signals gathered by SOSUS could be used not only to distinguish among different submarine classes but also among individual subs in the same class. Analysis of the signals from the SEA SPIDER array, near Hawaii, yielded the conclusion that the sub’s most likely resting place was 1,700 miles northwest of Hawaii, at 40 degrees latitude and 180 degrees longitude.11
Captain James F. Bradley Jr., who headed the Office of Naval Intelligence’s undersea warfare office, brought the news of the missing Soviet submarine to senior Navy officials, who then proposed to Secretary of the Navy Paul Nitze that the USS Halibut be assigned to search for the sub. Ultimately, the United States might be able to recover its missiles, code-books, and technological information.12
The Halibut had been converted from a guided missile submarine to a “spy sub” under the direction of John P. Craven, the first director of the Navy’s Deep Submergence Systems Project. The Brooklyn native, whose credentials included a doctorate in mechanical engineering and service as chief scientist in the Navy’s Polaris missile program, had modified the sub so that it could dangle cameras to view the ocean bottom as it hovered below the surface. What he had hoped to find, as part of an operation code-named SAND DOLLAR, were the warheads the Soviets left behind after missile tests in the Pacific.13
During summer 1968, the Halibut lowered its thick cable toward the ocean floor, the attached lights and cameras searching for the sub. The resulting pictures showed the submarine’s sail, the three missile tubes, one of which was intact, and a sailor’s skeleton. The photos also showed that the lost submarine had broken into pieces. The rear engineering section had split off from the forward and central sections, which were about 200 feet in length and carried the ship’s three missiles.14
In early September, the Halibut returned with a set of 22,000 photographs of the lost submarine, which were code-named VELVET FIST. Craven later told Congress, in secret testimony, that the “Halibut was able to locate, examine, and evaluate the accident and to obtain significant intelligence information concerning the submarine, its mission, and its equipments.”15
But both the Navy and CIA wanted more than pictures—at the very least, the warheads and cipher material. Examination of the warheads would provide the United States with insight into the state of Soviet nuclear technology—particularly the reliability, accuracy, and detonation mechanisms of the missiles. Equally prized were the cipher machines and code manuals that might be stored in watertight safes.16
Other possible items for recovery included the torpedoes, which if recovered would give U.S. analysts their first look at the Soviet devices. Data concerning the homing devices incorporated into the torpedo design would be of aid in developing countermeasures. And there was the submarine itself. Analysts could subject the steel used in the hulls to metallurgical analysis and possibly determine how deep Soviet subs could dive.17
The prospect of recovering significant material produced two proposals—one Navy, one CIA. Bradley and Craven suggested sending mini-subs to grab a nuclear warhead, the safe containing the crypto codes, and the submarine’s burst transmitters and receivers. They considered it unnecessary to recover the missiles, which were primitive, and the submarine hull.18
After listening to Bradley and Craven’s idea, Duckett and other CIA officials came back with a much more dramatic plan—to recover the forward and central sections of the submarine. According to one account, Bradley and Craven thought they were crazy. And when Duckett proposed mounting a recovery effort to DCI Richard Helms, his first response was “You must be crazy.” But, after further consideration, Helms approved Duckett’s idea.19
With approval from the White House, the CIA contacted eccentric multimillionaire Howard Hughes, whose organization had a passion for secrecy. Hughes, along with its subcontractors, would spend over three years working on the first phase of what was then known as Project AZORIAN. They produced the Glomar Explorer—36,000 tons, 618 feet in length, and 115.5 feet in the beam—to serve as a floating, highly stable platform. In the center of the ship, a high derrick passed piping directly through the “moon pool” in the ship’s hull—a pool 200 feet long and 65 feet wide. The pool could be opened to allow an object to be lifted into it from the sea. A companion to the ship was a huge submersible barge, the Hughes Marine Barge-1 (HMB-1), roughly the size of a football field, that was covered by an oval roof and lowered below the Glomar Explorer. The barge carried gigantic retrieval claws that could embrace the submarine and raise it from its watery grave. The roof prevented Soviet reconnaissance satellites from photographing the cargo.20
The loss of the Golf-II submarine, in addition to serving as the catalyst for AZORIAN, also led to the creation of a new reconnaissance office in which Duckett and the DS&T played a key role. The National Underwater Reconnaissance Office (NURO) was established in 1969 to serve as an underwater NRO, coordinating CIA and Navy efforts in underwater reconnaissance operations that included not only AZORIAN but also submarine reconnaissance missions,
which often involved covert entry into Soviet ports. The office was headed by the Secretary of the Navy, at the time John Warner, the future senator from Virginia. Bradley served as NURO’s first staff director, and Duckett as the senior CIA representative to the new office.21 At the time NURO was formed, completion of the AZORIAN mission was several years away.
DRAGON LADIES AND NICE GIRLS
Shortly before Bud Wheelon departed, the Office of Special Activities had also undergone a change of command. In August 1966, a month after Jack Ledford returned to regular Air Force duty, Brig. Gen. Paul Bacalis became the new head of the CIA’s aerial reconnaissance effort. Bacalis, who had flown fifty combat missions as a B-24 pilot during World War II, had spent the two previous years at SAC headquarters, in the Inspector General’s office and the operations directorate.22
As with Ledford, the job came as a surprise to Bacalis. In mid-1966, he was on the promotion list for brigadier general when he received a message to report to the Pentagon, where he discovered he had a job interview over at the CIA. Once there, he spent the entire day being interviewed by Wheelon, Duckett, Ledford, and Raborn. After three weeks passed, during which time other candidates were also interviewed, Bacalis was told his new assignment was as chief of OSA. Rather than the desk job he expected, he had his “own little Air Force.”23
That “little Air Force” included the U-2s as well as the A-12s produced by the OXCART program. At the time Bacalis became OSA chief, the agency’s U-2 fleet had dwindled to six. However, on August 1, 1966, Mc-Namara and Helms had decided to order eight upgraded U-2s from Lockheed on behalf of the CIA and Air Force, and in November, they tacked on another four aircraft to their order. Of the total, six eventually went to the CIA.24
Of course, while Lockheed worked on producing the new planes, the Nationalist Chinese pilots of Detachment H continued flying the old ones on an assortment of missions. On November 26, 1966, a mission planned to cover twenty-three targets selected by the interagency Committee on Overhead Reconnaissance (COMOR) penetrated the Chinese mainland at 69,000 feet, southeast of Luchiao Airfield. Before the mission was aborted due to an overheated light, the U-2 photographed twenty of the COMOR targets plus another forty of interest to the intelligence community. Coverage was obtained of Chungan Airfield, and a number of KOMAR missile patrol boats were detected at the Santu Naval Base.25
On June 5, 1967, twelve days before China’s first detonation of a hydrogen bomb, Spike Chuang departed from Ban Takhli, Thailand, and flew a U-2 on a 3,700 mile, 9-hour round-trip flight, taking the plane and its cameras over the Chinese test site at Lop Nur. Captain Tom Hwang Lung Pei’s flight, which began at Taoyuan, Taiwan, was considerably shorter, ending when an SA-2 hit his aircraft while it was over Chuh-sien.26 In addition to photographing Lop Nur, U-2s continued dropping sensors in the vicinity of the nuclear test site. A May 7, 1967, mission, also flown by Spike Chuang, involved dropping the fifteen-foot-long TOBASCO pod. Among the functions of an August 31 mission, flown by Bill Chang, was to interrogate the pod, possibly because of problems in relaying the data through a satellite. The mission required Chang to loiter in the vicinity of the pod for about ten minutes.27
In mid-1968, OSA deployed the first of the new generation of U-2s, the U-2R, to Taoyuan. The new plane was capable of carrying out long-duration SIGINT missions as well as acquiring valuable imagery through use of a new generation of Long-Range Oblique Photography (LOROP) cameras, which could photograph targets many miles to the side of the aircraft. The main camera, which had been designed with the requirements of technical intelligence analysts in mind, could distinguish objects smaller than four inches.28
To permit longer missions, fuel capacity was dramatically increased, with fuel tanks carried within the aircraft as well as on the wings. The plane also carried more sophisticated navigational aids. A typical U-2R mission might involve sensors weighing 3,000 pounds, a fuel load of 12,250 pounds, and flight time of seven and a half hours (most of it spent above 70,000 feet). A U-2R carrying its maximum fuel load of 18,500 pounds could fly a fifteen-hour mission.29
The next year, the question arose as to how much longer the agency would be operating U-2s. In March 1969, John McLucas became Under Secretary of the Air Force and Director of the NRO. He concluded early in his tenure that aerial reconnaissance operations could be handled solely by the Air Force and outside of the NRO.30
Aside from McLucas’s desire to remove the NRO from aerial operations, there was budgetary pressure, and the view that a single manager should be assigned to direct U-2 operations. If only one agency was going to handle the U-2, it would have to be the Air Force. By early December, Deputy Secretary of Defense David Packard had discussed the possibility with Richard Helms. The day before, Packard had instructed McLucas to prepare a plan to consolidate all U-2 operations under the Strategic Air Command. Packard noted that Helms agreed to consider such a plan, but that final agreement as to substance and timing had yet to be obtained.31
Those memos marked the beginning of the end for CIA operation of the plane it had brought into being, but the end would not be immediate. On Christmas Day, a memo written by Brig. Gen. Donald H. Ross, who had replaced Paul Bacalis as head of OSA in July 1968, noted that “We have just received word President has reviewed IDEALIST program, including TACKLE arrangements, and has concurred in need for continuation of program.” In early August 1970, in anticipation of a breach in the Egypt, President Nixon ordered periodic overflights.32 National security adviser Henry Kissinger asked the Air Force to provide U-2 coverage of the Suez Canal, after discovering that satellite imagery was inadequate to discover gun emplacements and jeeps. But the Air Force said it couldn’t move quickly enough—that it would take several weeks to move a U-2 detachment from Del Rio, Texas, to the Middle East.33
At a meeting of the NSC, Helms told his audience that the CIA U-2 detachment at Edwards (Detachment G) could deploy aircraft to the region and begin operations over the Suez Canal within a week. The flights began somewhat later than the CIA wished because of problems in acquiring a base from which to launch the missions. Apparently, Italy, Greece, and Spain refused to permit U-2 missions from their territory, while the United States had to “beg” the United Kingdom to permit flights from its base at Akrotiri on Cyprus.34
From August 9 through November 10, 1970, after which the Air Force assumed responsibility, CIA U-2s flew twenty-nine missions over the cease-fire zone as part of Project EVEN STEVEN. It also conducted a dozen ELINT missions. The CIA missions did reveal a breach of the cease-fire—Egypt’s construction of new missile sites near the Suez Canal, which would place at risk Israeli aircraft flying over Sinai’s east bank to defend the Bar-Lev line from an amphibious assault. Talks between Israel and Egypt occurred during and after the CIA’s monitoring, although not without interruption. Relations improved after Egyptian strongman Gamal Abdel Nasser died on September 28, 1970, and was replaced by Anwar Sadat, who extended the cease-fire and eased tensions.35
The CIA’s U-2 effort would extend deep into Carl Duckett’s stint as deputy director, but the OXCART project would become the world’s most advanced anachronism after fewer than ten operational missions. The CIA was lucky that it reaped even that much benefit from its considerable investment. The Air Force had used the OXCART as the basis for its look-alike SR-71, originally designated the RS-71 (RS for Reconnaissance Strike) until President Johnson inverted the two letters during the 1964 campaign. The existence of an Air Force SR-71 fleet would then be used to justify termination of the OXCART effort.
In November 1965, the Bureau of the Budget had circulated a memo expressing concern about the costs of the OXCART and SR-71 programs. It questioned the total number of planes as well as the necessity for a separate CIA fleet and recommended phasing out the OXCART program by September 1966 as well as halting further SR-71 procurement. OSA director Jack Ledford suggested that the Budget office’s proposal would “deny the United States Government a non-military capability to conduct aerial r
econnaissance of denied areas . . . in the years ahead.”36
There was also opposition outside the CIA. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara rejected the recommendation, presumably because the SR-71 would not be operational by September 1966. In July 1966, at the suggestion of the Budget Bureau, a study group, consisting of the CIA’s John Parangosky, C. W. Fischer of the Bureau of the Budget, and Herbert Bennington of the Defense Department, was established to look for ways to reduce the costs associated with the two programs. The group was requested to consider five alternatives, which it transformed into three options—maintain both planes; mothball the A-12s and share the SR-71s between the CIA and Air Force; and mothball the A-12s by January 1968 (assuming SR-71 readiness by September 1967) and turn the mission over to SAC. From the CIA’s perspective, the Bureau of the Budget, and in particular one of its staff members, W. R. Thomas, had one specific outcome in mind—termination of the OXCART program.37
That belief undoubtedly only increased the urgency OSA felt to give the A-12s a chance to demonstrate their value. During 1966, the CIA proposed to the 303 Committee that OXCART aircraft be deployed to Okinawa and fly reconnaissance missions over North Vietnam or China or both. All such proposals were rejected. The CIA, Joint Chiefs, and the PFIAB favored such operations, but they were opposed by McNamara, Vance, and Under Secretary of State U. Alexis Johnson—who felt that improved intelligence was not so urgently needed as to justify the political risks of basing the planes on Okinawa and the almost certain disclosures that would follow. They also preferred to preserve the nominal cloak of secrecy around the A-12 until events required its use—although the existence of an A-12 type plane, the SR-71, had been acknowledged by President Johnson.38
The Wizards of Langley Page 19
