inert material with virtually no body assimilation. Inhalation is a different mechanism entirely and one which presents a considerable threat. Any particle small enough to reach the lower respiratory tract apparently has an excellent chance of clinging to alveolar surfaces and staying to do radiation damage… One cannot outlive the influence, because the alpha half life of plutonium-239 is of the order of 20,000 years.”
34. “respirable plutonium remarkably far downwind”: Ibid., 7 (“Foreword, Abstract”).
35. “earthworms moved 18 tons of soil”: Ibid., 101 (8.6, “A New Program”). “Finally, Dr. Kermit Larson agreed to exploit an idea which grew out of discussions among participants in the anniversary measurements — earthworms. Compton’s Encyclopedia reports that the renowned Charles Darwin studied an acre of garden in which he claimed 53,000 hard-working earthworms moved 18 tons of soil. Translocation of soil, the possibility that earthworm body chemistry may vary plutonium form, etc., could turn out to be significant influences, intentional or unintentional, in the rehabilitation of a weapon-accident environment.”
36. Pauling said: The quotes in this two-page section, and also the newspaper quotes here, are from the extensive newspaper archive collection located in the Atomic Testing Museum library reading room in Las Vegas, Nevada.
37. The Pentagon wondered: Fehner and Gosling, Battlefield of the Cold War, 159-82.
38. caused Area 51 personnel: Interview with Richard Mingus.
39. “the Indoctrination Project: DNA 6005F, Plumbbob Series 1957, United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Chapter 4, Exercise Desert Rock VII and VIII Programs, 81, 96.
40. Committee on Human Resources: Memorandum, Members of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, September 8, 1994, “Human Experiments in Connection with the
Atomic Bomb Tests,” attachment 5, item 10.
41. “mythical attack by an aggressor force”: During the Hood nuclear bomb, the Marine Corps conducted coordinated air-ground assault maneuvers that included helicopter airlifts and tactical air support; “Exercise Desert Rock VII–VIII, Operation Plumbbob,” Defense Nuclear Agency 4747F.
42. Mingus saw that a large swath of the desert was on fire: Interview with Mingus.
43. Area 51 had become uninhabitable: Interview with Richard Mingus; also Office Memorandum, United States Government, Observed Damage at Watertown, Nevada, following the Sixth Nuclear shot of Plumbbob, July 9, 1957. R. A. Gilmore, Off-Site Rad-Safe, NTO, #0150371.
Chapter Seven: From Ghost Town to Boomtown
Interviews: T. D. Barnes, Peter Merlin, Al O’Donnell, Richard Mingus, Jim Freedman, Ed Lovick, Tony Bevacqua, Ray Goudey, Ernie Williams, Harry Martin, Colonel Slater, Frank Murray
1. measuring fallout with Geiger counters in hand: Interview with T. D. Barnes; Operation Plumbbob Projects and Reports: Program 2, Project 2.2., Neutron Induced Activities in Soil Elements WT-1411; Project 2.5 Initial Gamma Radiation Intensity and Neutron-Induced Gamma Radiation of NTS Soil WT-1414.
2. dressed in white lab coats and work boots: Photographs viewed at the Atomic Testing Museum library, Las Vegas.
3. from pinhead particles to pencil-size pieces of steel: DNA 6005F, Plumbbob Series 1957, United States Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Tests, Nuclear Test Personnel Review, Chapter 4, Exercise Desert Rock VII and VIII Programs, Civil Effects Test Group, Fallout Studies, 204–247; AEC Research and Development Report BNWL481-1, 113 pages.
4. surprise of the nuclear scientists: McPhee, Curve of Binding Energy, 166-67.
5. could locate them with magnets: Roadrunners Internationale newsletter, August 1, 2009, 34th edition. From the personal diary of Dan Sheahan, owner and operator of the Groom Mine, provided to the Roadrunners Internationale by his great-granddaughter Lisa Heawood.
6. weapons planners moved ahead: Interviews with Al O’Donnell, Richard Mingus, and Jim Freedman. There was a nuclear test ban moratorium on the horizon, which meant that all weapons tests were scheduled to end on October 31, 1958. At the test site, weapons engineers worked at a frenzied pace to finish as many nuclear tests as they could before the deadline.
7. the animals observed: An anonymous eyewitness related to me
the horror of watching a dying horse seek water at Area 51. The AEC has never declassified its animal observations, which I understand are extensive. In an AEC document released to the public on July 15, 1957, entitled “Responsibility for U.S. Nuclear Weapons Programs,” in a section called “Operating Controls,” it is stated that “cattle and horses grazing within a few miles of the detonation suffered skin deep beta radiation burns on their hides (1952 and 1953 series) with no effect on their breeding value and no effect on the cattle’s beef quality. Radiation fallout more than a few miles from detonation has been quite harmless to humans, animals or crops.” In The Day We Bombed Utah, John G. Fuller presents the opposite argument.
8. emergency landing on the former U-2 airstrip: Interview with Peter Merlin.
9. Edward Lovick was standing on: Interview with Edward Lovick.
10. grandfather of stealth: Before working on the A-12, Lovick’s first job at Skunk Works was to try to reduce the radar reflections being bounced back from the U-2 to the Soviet radar systems. With Area 51 still shuttered from atomic fallout, the physicist’s first efforts took place at a remote hangar in the north corner of Edwards Air Force Base in California. There, Lovick and colleagues spent hours coming up with all kinds of antiradar schemes: “It was our job to invent something that would neither compromise the aircraft’s height, nor allow its hydraulic system to overheat as had happened with Sieker. Kelly Johnson had a rule: one pound of extra weight applied to the aircraft would reduce its altitude by one foot. This meant our camouflage coating couldn’t exceed a quarter of an inch and had to weigh as little as possible.”
11. aircraft would be radically different: Interviews with Ed Lovick, Dr. Wheelon, T. D. Barnes. Other federal agencies were also secretly experimenting with supersonic flight, but not sustained flight at Mach 3. The Air Force, NASA, and the Navy were involved in the experimental X-15, a hypersonic airplane that would lay the groundwork for travel into space. But the X-15 was boosted off the back of a mother ship, whereas the Agency’s new plane would leave the tarmac on its own power and return to the base the same way.
12. twenty-second window: Peebles, Dark Eagles, 51. 13. it loses precision and speed: Interview with Dr. Wheelon.
14. minutiae involving radar returns: Jones, The Wizard War. Lovick spent hours describing for me the fundamental concepts of radar, which is an acronym for radio detection and ranging, which first came into being in 1904 when a German engineer named Christian Hulsmeyer figured out that electromagnetic waves could be used to identify, or “see,” a metal ship floating in dense fog. It didn’t take long for the military to realize the inherent value of radar as a way to detect large, moving metal objects otherwise invisible to the naked eye. This was especially true for ships and airplanes, two key means of transport in twentieth-century warfare.
15. fourteen-year-old children were doing in 1933: Interview with Lovick. By high school, Lovick had created a radio receiver from scrap metal, vacuum tubes, and discarded radio parts which enabled him “to detect signals a hundred miles away, which gave me the intense feeling of discovering something that I did not previously have evidence as being there.”
16. the Archangel-1: Robarge, Archangel, 4–5. Archangel is a term meaning “an angel of high rank” and it is also a port city in northwestern Russia, home to many Soviet radar stations that would one day be trying to track the A-12.
17. fifty Skunk Works employees returned to Area 51: Ibid., 6. 18. “build a full scale mockup”: Johnson, History of the Oxcart Program, 5.
19. code-named Titania: United States Nuclear Tests July 1945 through September 1992 DOE/NV-209-REV 15, 144. The bomb was named after a satellite of the planet Uranus.
20. Each member of Lovick’s crew: Interview with Lovick. 2
1. “Ike wants an airplane from Mandrake the magician”: Rich,
Skunk Works, 198.
22. “by adding the chemical compound cesium”: Johnson, History of the Oxcart Program, 4. Johnson wrote: “we proposed the use of cesium additive to the fuel. This was first brought up by Mr. Ed Lovick of ADP, its final development was passed over to P&W.” Lovick recalls traveling to Pratt and Whitney’s research center in Florida where the aircraft engines were being tested. “I realized that I had utilized theory that applied to thermal ionization of gases and would need to use parameters appropriate to electron emission from hot solid surfaces. Our results indicated that we were dealing with mixtures of the two states but we did not know how to determine how much of each kind of material, gas or solid, was involved in the production of the ionization that we measured. The results were encouraging, but we needed to know more. So we were moved to much better facilities at the P. & W. Willgoos Turbine Laboratory in East Hartford, Connecticut.” It was there that the problem was solved.
23. Oxcart being the fastest: CIA Document EO 12958 3.3(b) Oxcart Facts: A-12 Specifications; A-12 Experience Record (as of July 10, 1967). Note that in November of 1961, the X-15 rocket plane flew Mach 6, or 4,092 mph. At the time of this meeting, the CIA thought they were building the fastest airplane in the world, which technically it was, because the X-15 didn’t take off on its own power. As per interviews with T. D. Barnes, who worked on both projects.
24. Area 51 was back in business: Parangosky, The Oxcart Story, 3 (per Dr. Wheelon, Parangosky was the true author of this seminal work on Oxcart; any other name was a pseudonym). The contract was officially signed on February 11, 1960.
25. the CIA hired work crews from next door: Interview with Ernie Williams.
26. The construction of a new runway and the fuel farm: Interview with Harry Martin; Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 25–26.
27. The A-12 Oxcart was a flying fuel tank: Interview with Harry Martin.
28. CIA’s “own little air force”: Interview with Colonel Slater. 29. Getting the Oxcart to fly: Interview with Frank Murray.
30. 186-mile swath just to make a U-turn: Interview with Colonel Slater.
31. same was true at NORAD: Interviews with Dr. Wheelon, Colonel Slater.
32. they passed a simple sketch: Interview with Ed Lovick. 33. S. Varentsov: CIA Memo, S. Varenstov, Chief Marshal, USSR,
The Problem of Combat with the Nuclear Means of the Enemy and Its Solution, August 1961.
34. advancing surface-to-air missile technology: Interviews with Dr. Wheelon, Ed Lovick, T. D. Barnes.
Chapter Eight: Cat and Mouse Becomes Downfall
Interviews: Gary Powers Jr., T. D. Barnes, Dr. Wheelon, Jim Freedman, Gene Poteat, Helen Kleyla (Richard Bissell’s longtime secretary, via written correspondence)
1. drenched in sweat: Powers, Operation Overflight, 75.
2. Tyuratam was Russia’s Cape Canaveral: CIA report on U-2 Vulnerability Tests, April 1960, Eisenhower Archives, Office of the Staff Secretary, Subject Series, Alphabetical Subseries, Box 15, Intelligence Matters. Memo: ICBM Targets — The Urals and Tyura Tam, “Sverdlovsk in the Urals is the best bet on the location of a major ICBM factory.” Notable color U-2 flight maps are in this file.
3. head up to a facility at Plesetsk: Harford, Korolev, 112. “R-7s and R-7As were deployed at only two launch pads at Baikonur and, eventually, four at Plesetsk, a launch center readied by 1959… Plesetsk soon became the busiest of the USSR’s three launch facilities, having responsibility for placing in orbit reconnaissance and other military satellites.”
4. two-and-a-half-foot increments: Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball, 185.
5. indicated he wanted to speak with him: Powers, Operation Overflight, 69.
6. had a premonition: Ibid.
7. awakened by a ringing telephone: W. Taubman, Khrushchev, 443.
8. a sharp poke in the eye: Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 444. “Sverdlovsk, was an especially deep penetration into our territory and therefore an especially arrogant violation… They were making these flights to show up our impotence. Well, we weren’t impotent any longer.”
9. “An uncomfortable situation was shaping up”: Orlov, “The U-2 Program,” 10.
10. Soviets’ secret bioweapons program: Hoffman, The Dead Hand, 119.
11. Kyshtym 40 was as valuable: Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball, 43. 12. “Destroy target”: Orlov, “The U-2 Program,” 11. 13. Stop and think: Powers, Operation Overflight, 83. 14. “He’s turning left”: Jack Anderson, “US Heard Russians
Chasing U-2,” Washington Post, May 12, 1960.
15. NSA operators heard: Bamford, Body of Secrets, 49.
16. “Bill Bailey did not come home”: Richelson, Wizards of Langley, 18.
17. The brand was Laika: Powers, Operation Overflight, 91.
18. “We believed that if a U-2 was shot”: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 121-22. But Bissell also admitted that the Agency agreed “unanimously” that the “big rolls of film aboard the plane would not be destroyed… Their nonflammable base would prevent them from burning, and they could be dropped from a height of ten miles and survive. We always knew that in the event of a crash there was going to be a couple rolls of film lying around, and there was not much we could do about it.”
19. the White House claimed: Department of State, for the Press, No. 249, May 6, 1960; Department of State, for the Press, No. 254, May 9, 1960.
20. But Khrushchev had evidence: Incoming telegram, Department of State, Control 6700, May 10, 1969.
21. With great bravado: W. Taubman, Khrushchev, 455-58. 22. “I would like to resign”: P. Taubman, Secret Empire, 396.
23. Eisenhower wouldn’t bow: Bamford, Body of Secrets, 53–54. “For Eisenhower, the whole process was quickly turning into Chinese water torture. Every day he was being forced to dribble out more and more of the story.”
24. “the first time any nation had publicly admitted”: Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball, 49.
25. authorized a Soviet military base: Ibid., 55.
26. twenty-five minutes’ time: Havana, Cuba, to Washington, DC, is 1,130 miles. In 1960, a Russian missile traveled at approximately Mach 3.5.
27. During Powers’s trial: “Report on Conclusion of Powers Trial, USSR International Affairs,” August 22, 1960, approved for release September 1985, 39 pages.
28. “Las Vegas firing range (poligon) in the Nevada desert”: Ibid., RB-6.
29. “criminal conspiracy”: Ibid. 30. “follower of Hitler”: Ibid., RB-20.
31. Watertown as the U-2 training facility: Powers, Operation Overflight, 114.
32. out at the Ranch: Parangosky, The Oxcart Story, 6–7.
33. Richard Bissell had a tennis court put in: Interview with Dr. Wheelon.
34. Prohibited Area P-275: Interview with Peter Merlin.
35. “thirteen million different parts”: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 133.
36. the titanium that first held everything up: Pedlow and Welzenbach, Central Intelligence Agency, 21–22.
37. nearly 95 percent of what Lockheed initially received: Robarge,
Archangel, 11.
38. Russia was spending billions of rubles: Interview with Ed Lovick.
39. “who thought ELINT was a dirty word”: Poteat, “Engineering and the CIA,” 24.
40. Barnes was recruited by the CIA: Interview with Barnes; CIA Personal Resume, 1966, Barnes, Thornton Duard.
41. Castro’s regime “must be overthrown”: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 153.
42. “Richard Bissell,” Kennedy said: Thomas, “Wayward Spy,” 36. 43. put a bullet in his own head: Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 303. 44. Bahнa de Cochinos, or the Bay of Pigs: Kirkpatrick, The Real
CIA, chapter 8; Pfeiffer, CIA’s Official History of the Bay of Pigs; Warner, “CIA’s Internal Probe.”
45. could help in gathering intel: Oral history interview with Richard M. Bissell Jr. by Theodore A. Wilson and Richard
D. McKinzie, East Hartford, Connecticut, July 9, 1971.
46. Bissell blamed the mission’s failure on his old rival General Curtis LeMay: Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 176. In discussing the decision of the Joint Chiefs, which included LeMay sitting in for the commandant of the Marines, “to cancel the air strikes so readily,” Bissell stated, “one could make a case that their view reflected rivalry between the air force and the CIA. The agency’s earlier success with the overhead reconnaissance programs had disturbed certain high-ranking members of the air force.” Certainly he is referring to LeMay. “Friends of mine in the military spoke frankly to me about this,” Bissell added. “There was no denying that the sentiment existed among military that all the air activities undertaken by the CIA in the U-2, SR-71 [note: Oxcart had not been declassified yet] and spy satellite programs should have come under jurisdiction of the air force. Robert Amory recalled in a 1966 interview that, after I
was put in charge of the U-2 program, ‘essentially the air force’s eye was wiped in you-know-what and they resented that from the beginning.’” For Bissell, “the resentment never died.”
47. if LeMay had provided adequate air cover: Ibid., 175. “Curtis LeMay (who was sitting in for the absent commandant of the Marines) and several of the chiefs admitted their doubt about the absolute essentiality of air cover… I was shocked. We all knew only too well that without air support, the project would fail.”
48. “time zone confusion”: Ibid., 189. Bissell wrote, “When the B26s lumbered into the air the next day, however, no navy cover appeared. It seemed that a misunderstanding about the correct time standard had prevented the air support from being at the target area when expected. As a result, the B-26s were either forced from the field of battle or shot down, the final tragic blow.” From the National Security Archive: “The unmarked jets failed to rendezvous with the bombers, however, because the CIA and the Pentagon were unaware of a time zone difference between Nicaragua and Cuba.”
Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base Page 47