The Wizards of Langley

by Jeffrey T Richelson

  With the issue still before the Senate, and no clear winner, Duckett prepared a July 17 briefing that, he would recall, was “as objective as I know how to do a paper.” With only senators allowed on the floor, Henry Jackson of Washington read the paper. Several weeks later, on August 5, Foster addressed a House subcommittee in closed session. He acknowledged that the evidence did not prove without question that the SS-9 was MIRVed but argued that “it very strongly indicates that it is a MIRV.”103

  On August 6, the attempt to stop Safeguard or limit it to a research and development program failed. Vice-President Spiro Agnew broke a fifty-fifty Senate tie in favor of the program. Brandwein later observed that “we lost that battle . . . I mean, I was convinced that the SS-9 was not MIRVed, was not a first-strike weapon, but we just couldn’t talk people into it.”104*

  CHECKROTE

  One of ORD’s most successful projects in the late 1960s that aided U.S. monitoring of launches from the Shuangchengzi missile test complex (SCMC) was the CHECKROTE over-the-horizon radar. Installation of CHECKROTE on Taiwan began in May 1965, and operations started on August 1, 1966.105

  The United States suspected that the PRC was testing medium- or possibly intermediate-range missiles at the complex, making it necessary to design the radar to detect the missile skin rather than the enhanced image. Thus, the radar had to be three times more sensitive than EARTHLING. CHECKROTE’s format was patterned after EARTHLING’s, but improved performance was obtained by increasing its power and antenna performance. CHECKROTE’s range resolution was also improved, to twenty times better than EARTHLING’s—an improvement that was crucial to the acquisition of missile trajectory information.106

  The first missile detections from Shuangchengzi were made on December 5, 1966. Through September 1968, CHECKROTE identified thirty-eight suspected missile launches—three in 1966, twenty-nine in 1967, and six in 1968. Among the missiles being tested at the time was the CSS-2 intermediate-range missile, with a range of 1,735 miles; it became “the backbone of the Chinese missile force.” Analysts studied the detected signatures to determine if they were consistent with characteristics of missiles expected to be launched from SCMC and with expected radar performance. The conclusion was that the great majority of the signatures collected were bona fide detections. By spring 1969, a major upgrade of the target-identification capabilities of CHECKROTE was in progress.107

  NEW BIRDS IN SPACE

  In October 1966, Richard Lee Stallings, a senior official of the Office of ELINT, arrived in Australia to oversee the construction of the RHYOLITE ground station at Pine Gap, near Alice Springs in central Australia. Earlier, Stallings had been stationed in West Germany, where he was responsible for management of OEL’s efforts in that country and the coordination of the CIA’s SIGINT activities with those of the West German Federal Intelligence Service (BND). Stallings remained in Canberra until final arrangements for establishment of the station had been made, then moved to Alice Springs toward the end of January 1967.108

  OEL’s Ground Systems Division operated the station on behalf of RHYOLITE’s “owner”—the Office of Special Projects. Back in Washington, John McMahon, who had become deputy director of OSP, directed the construction effort. As he put it, simply and emphatically, many years later, “I built Pine Gap.”109

  Before the end of 1968, the first two radomes (radar domes), made of Perspex and mounted on concrete structures, had been built. The radomes, about 110 feet and 70 feet, respectively, protected the enclosed antenna against dust, wind, and the prying cameras of Soviet spy satellites. Construction of the third and fourth radomes apparently began in November 1968; they were completed in mid-1969. In early December 1968, with initial construction of the facility completed, Stallings was succeeded by Harry E. Fitzwater, who would remain at the station until 1972.110

  By the time Stallings departed, the Air Force’s “alternative” to RHYOLITE had already made it into space. Indeed, the first CANYON launch attracted the attention of the New York Times’s John Noble Wilford. His August 7, 1968, article, “A Secret Payload Is Orbited by U.S.,” noted that the satellite, launched from Cape Kennedy on an Atlas- Agena rocket, carried a “super-secret payload.” In that pre-Watergate era, launch officials told inquisitive reporters, “You wouldn’t want to know what’s on that bird. It’s that secret.” The secrecy resulted in the first closed launch from the Cape since 1963. The erroneous belief persisted for two decades afterward that the CANYON launches were part of Program 949, a program to detect missile launches via the heat emitted by the missiles.111

  Ultimately, seven CANYON spacecraft, bearing the numerical designations 7501 through 7507, were orbited, the second on April 12, 1969. Six were successful. Each CANYON spacecraft transmitted its intercepted material to a ground station at Bad Aibling, Germany.* Approximately two months after the launch of 7502, another Atlas-Agena D blasted off from Cape Kennedy. This time, rather than placing a spacecraft in an approximately 20,000- by 24,000-mile orbit with a 9.9-degree inclination, the rocket sent the first RHYOLITE, 7601, into geostationary orbit above the equator just south of Borneo. From that location, it could intercept the telemetry signals from solid-fueled missiles fired from Plesetsk, as well as monitor SLBMs fired from the White Sea. Once RHYOLITE was in orbit, its antenna, about sixty to seventy feet in diameter, was unfurled, and after a period of testing, it began operations. Because of the similarities between the CANYON and RHYOLITE launches, which employed Atlas- Agena Ds and were launched from Cape Kennedy into high-altitude orbits, outside observers also believed 7601 to be a Program 949 satellite.112

  The primary mission of “Bird 1,” as Pine Gap personnel called 7601, was to intercept the telemetry from Soviet missile tests. But it was soon discovered that 7601 also had a significant capability against communications in the VHF and UHF bands, and it was used to monitor both the Indo-Pakistani War in 1971 and the Vietnam theater.113

  For part of 1969, it seemed that RHYOLITE might be the only one of Wheelon’s satellite programs that would make it off the drawing board and onto the launchpad. The HEXAGON/KH-9 program was abruptly canceled. The budget crunch, created by the Vietnam War and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, threatened to end the HEXAGON program before it reached the launch stage.114

  As a substitute, plans code-named HIGHER BOY were developed to put some KH-8/GAMBIT spacecraft into an area surveillance orbit. Such ad hoc substitutions were not acceptable to those running the reconnaissance program. In an attempt to restart the flow of funds, Roland Inlow, chairman of the Committee on Imagery Requirements and Exploitation (which had replaced the Committee on Overhead Reconnaissance in 1967), was sent to talk to James Schlesinger, who was responsible for national security programs at the Bureau of the Budget. Inlow explained that the KH-9 was essential to arms control verification, and the money began to flow again.115

  One last delay occurred in late 1970 as the spacecraft was being prepared for a January launch. A minor change, involving a single resistor, was ordered on paper but never actually made. The result was catastrophic damage to the film supply during thermal tests. Preparations then were begun to make the second HEXAGON vehicle the first to fly.116

  The spacecraft lifted off from a Vandenberg AFB launchpad on June 15, 1971, propelled into space by a Titan 3D with 3 million pounds of thrust. The newest addition to the U.S. reconnaissance arsenal was a 30,000-pound cylinder, forty feet long and ten feet in diameter. Its size enabled it to host a variety of other projects. Thus, the new-generation surveillance satellites often carried antennae for SIGINT collection and relaying messages from U.S. covert agents in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. The additional missions often led NRO to keep the spacecraft in orbit even after all the film had been returned to earth. HEXAGON launches also often carried a second payload, a ferret spacecraft designated 989 and designed to detect and record the signals from Soviet and other radar systems.117

  The camera system, designated the KH-9, consisted of two cameras with 60-inch lense
s. The cameras could operate individually or be employed to obtain overlapping photos of a target—which could then be used with a stereoscope to extract additional information about a target’s dimensions. In addition, the cameras could produce images covering a much wider area than the KH-4B but with a resolution of two feet, almost as good as the eighteen-inch resolution of the KH-7. Whereas the KH-4B camera system had a swath width of 40-by-180 miles, the KH-9 system was twice that—80-by-360 miles; the result was a fourfold increase in the territory that could be covered by a single photo. And whereas the KH-4B returned two film capsules, the KH-9 returned four.118

  The KH-9 represented a major advance in U.S. reconnaissance capabilities. The greater film capacity meant longer lifetimes, and in normal circumstances, film could be returned as frequently as with the KH-4B. Thus, in the early days of the program, the KH-9 returned film capsules every three or four days. In emergencies, an incomplete reel could be returned without drastic damage to the overall mission. But most important, the tremendous swath width of the KH-9 meant an ability to conduct true wide-area searches to find new missile fields, test ranges, and nuclear facilities. It also meant that a greater number of requests for photography could be accommodated because of the ability to incorporate a wider area in a single scene. Thus, lower-priority targets had a better chance of being photographed.119

  The ability of the KH-9 to photograph huge chunks of territory was a delight to the mappers of the newly created Defense Mapping Agency. The fewer photos needed to cover a part of the world, the easier it was to construct an accurate map. When the KH-9 program was terminated, the mappers at DMA “wept blood,” according to one intelligence official.120

  The first KH-9, designated 1901, operated in an elliptical 114-by-186- mile orbit, with a 96.4-degree inclination. The inclination ensured that 1901 not only covered the entire earth from pole to pole in the course of its operations but also that its orbit was sun-synchronous—meaning that each daylight pass over an area could be made at an identical sun-angle and thus avoid differences in pictures of the same area that might result when photos were taken from different angles. Each ground track repeated every three and a half days. On days when a particular area was overflown, it was overflown twice, once in daylight and once in darkness.121

  Between its launch on June 15 and its destructive reentry on July 6, fifty-two days later, 1901’s operators checked out its imaging, communications, and propulsion systems. It was also extensively calibrated to determine how well the new camera system held up to its theoretical promise. As with all new satellites, photographs were taken of a variety of locations in the United States and where the dimensions of the target and energy emissions could be precisely determined.122 Once checkout was completed, 1901 could begin snapping pictures of the usual targets of interest—including a variety of Soviet and Chinese nuclear and missile installations.

  PROJECT IMPACT

  Reconnaissance was not the only directorate activity conducted to support U.S. efforts in Vietnam. OSI’s Project IMPACT, whose objective was to diagnose the nature of epidemics, predict their spread, and estimate their impact on military and civilian activities, was employed in an attempt to guide U.S. military actions.123

  IMPACT’s earliest success was in December 1966, when OSI identified an outbreak of meningitis in China based on reports portraying the disease as viral encephalitis but stating that officials were using antibiotics to fight the epidemic, an ineffective medical strategy against encephalitis. IMPACT analysts proceeded to predict the spread of the disease from one province to the next and to note how it hampered the movements and activities of the Red Guard.124

  In summer 1968, a new strain of influenza rolled out of China and into a substantial portion of the world, including Vietnam. Project IMPACT was assigned to forecast and quantify the effects upon the Vietcong (VC) and North Vietnamese Army (NVA). The effort involved establishing a chronology of the times and locations of outbreaks, using reports over the 1968–1970 period—including any quantifiable figures on the rates of sickness and the frequency of VC-NVA requests for drugs and other medical supplies.125

  A pattern evolved in which occurrence of the flu was a function of traffic density and personnel moving south from North Vietnam, and the trend coincided with the dry season—when the bulk of all military supplies moved down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Incapacitation rates ranged from about 40 to 70 percent, and analysts had very good evidence that except for isolation and quarantine of patients, the enemy had no capability to protect VC-NVA personnel by mass vaccinations.126

  In December 1970, reports of outbreaks among VC-NVA forces in the North Vietnam–Laos border area increased, indicating the stage was set for the beginning of the 1971 influenza epidemic there. Members of the CIA’s Office of the Special Assistant for Vietnamese Affairs (SAVA) were consulted, and analysts used their data on traffic routes, troop concentration, and location of way stations to construct a model of the movement of the flu epidemic. Tchepone was a key junction on the Communist road network that extended into the south. If Tchepone became infected, the disease would move from way station to way station north and south in Laos and back to North Vietnam.127

  In late December, there were indications that the NVA 4th and 16th AAA Battalions at Tchepone had become infected. It was estimated that in the primary infected area of Quang Binh province, the epidemic would peak about January 30, and in the secondary infected areas south of Tchepone, the peak would occur about mid-February. An overall 50 percent infection rate was calculated for VC-NVA personnel in those areas, and estimates were that half of those infected would be incapable of performing normal duties for about one week.128

  Indigenous intelligence teams operating in Laos and Cambodia were warned to take special precautions during the peak influenza periods. South Vietnamese Army units entered Laos and conducted extensive operations near Tchepone and other areas around the primary infectious zone during February, hoping to take advantage of a weakened enemy. However, these operations weren’t mounted until just after the time analysts predicted the enemy would be most affected. As a result, the combat effectiveness of the VC-NVA forces was probably degraded to a lesser degree than if the operations had been launched earlier.129

  *The CIA also tried on at least one occasion to train pigeons to carry a camera and move their heads to activate the device. The initial test run involved releasing a camera-carrying pigeon in the Washington, D.C., area. Almost two days after its release, the pigeon returned to the release site—on foot. The camera around its neck was too heavy to permit sustained flight.

  *The CIA’s view proved correct. The SS-9 Mod-4 was never deployed, apparently because it could not be made sufficiently accurate. The first genuine MIRV was tested on the SS-18 Mod-2 in August 1973. A later SS-18 Mod was deployed with MIRVs. The first operational missile to be deployed with MIRVs was the SS-19 Mod-1 in December 1974. (Kirsten Lundberg, “The SS-19 Controversy: Intelligence as Political Football,” Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 1989, p. 20.)

  *A number of CANYON spacecraft often had problems communicating with the Bad Aibling ground station. However, over the life of the program, CANYON satellites produced a massive volume of intercepted material—covering North Vietnam, the Soviet Union, China, and the Middle East. The volume was so great that the United States arranged with Canada and Britain to have their SIGINT services provide analysts in exchange for access to the CANYON product. Unfortunately, one of the British personnel assigned to translate CANYON’s Soviet intercepts was Geoffrey Prime—who provided the Soviet Union with details of the program.

  6

  EMPIRE

  By 1972, Duckett’s leadership had helped solidify the position of the Directorate of Science and Technology, which had become a worldwide enterprise—with CORONA, HEXAGON/KH-9, and RHYOLITE spacecraft orbiting the earth, U-2s patrolling the skies, and ELINT stations in Iran and Norway intercepting Soviet missile telemetry. In Washington, the Foreign Missile and S
pace Analysis Center and OSI were analyzing foreign nuclear and missile programs. ORD, meanwhile, was looking toward the future.

  The directorate had also exhibited unusual organizational stability. The six offices Duckett had inherited—Computer Services, Special Projects, Special Activities, Research and Development, ELINT, and Scientific Intelligence—along with FMSAC, were still on the directorate’s organizational chart. Nor had there been any additions. That would change, with the reorganization of the responsibilities of FMSAC and OSI, the renaming and expansion of the mandate of Special Projects, and the acquisition of units that had been part of the intelligence and operations directorates.

  Meanwhile, the CIA role in the U-2 effort it had forged would end in 1974. The directorate would also enter into new areas—some of which, such as covert communications, would become permanent missions. Others such as parapsychology would, fortunately, not survive much longer than Duckett’s tenure.

  NEW ACQUISITIONS

  Three organizational changes occurred within the science and technology directorate in 1973. In September, responsibility for the analysis of the characteristics and capabilities of defensive missile and other weapons systems was transferred from OSI to FMSAC, which then became the Office of Weapons Intelligence (OWI).1

  Because the analysis of weapons systems had significant common elements—such as the dependence on telemetry and data processing techniques—all weapons research was consolidated in a single office. OSI remained responsible for producing finished intelligence on foreign nuclear capabilities, biological and chemical warfare, advanced technologies, and the physical and life sciences.2