Five CIA employees are known to have figured significantly in the NUMEC affair. The five made inconsistent and contradictory statements about the possibility of a diversion of HEU to Israel. Thus, one or more of the five may have lied about what they knew because they had no fear of punishment or they had sworn to protect official secrets. The purpose of this chapter is to elaborate the character and career of these five to aid in deciding whom to believe.
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In the case of NUMEC, numerous records exist to help sort out which of the five CIA officials to believe. The records include nearly 50 years of official but redacted records of the responsible government agencies, books by historians who interviewed scores of people and combed through reams of paper, admissions by historical persons in their memoirs, and newspaper accounts based on confidential statements of sources that were knowledgeable of the facts.
In deciding whom and what to believe, it is important to remember that interagency rivalries played a part in the NUMEC investigations. One Congressional investigator who read the Senate and House Intelligence Committee files on NUMEC told Hersh that Helms and Hoover sparred over the case for over a year. “The CIA was saying to Hoover, ‘you’re responsible for counterintelligence in America. Investigate Shapiro, and if he’s a spy, catch him.’ Hoover’s answer was, ‘we don’t really know if anything’s been taken. Go to Israel and get inside Dimona, and if you find evidence of the Shapiro uranium, let us know.’ It was a kind of a game. The memos were hysterical—they went back and forth.”610
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The Five senior employees of CIA who are known to have had a significant connection with or interest in Israel and NUMEC were James Angleton, Carl Duckett, John Hadden, Richard Helms and Theodore Shackley. Angleton and Helms were described briefly in earlier chapters and that information is not repeated here. This chapter provides more information about the lives of Duckett, Hadden, Helms and Shackley to aid in interpreting their role and credibility. The things that all five said about Israel and the bomb and about NUMEC are summarized.
James Jesus Angleton
Although much has been written about what Mossad did for CIA, not much has been said about what CIA’s consummate counterspy might have done for Israel. His contributions must have been substantial because in November 1987, a year after his death, the Israelis dedicated a memorial forest in the Jerusalem corridor to his name and erected a large stone monument near the King David Hotel in Jerusalem where he stayed when visiting his Israeli counterparts. The monument bears an inscription in English, Arabic and Hebrew “IN MEMORY OF A DEAR FRIEND, JAMES (JIM) ANGLETON.” In addition to the past and current heads of Israeli intelligence and defense organizations and Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek, the U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Angleton’s wife and daughters attended the dedication of the forest and the monument.611
In managing CIA’s interface with Israel, Angleton had the capability to withhold information from others about developments in the Israeli nuclear weapons program. To do so would have given his Israeli friends a better chance to get the job done (e.g., constructing Dimona while negotiating for conventional American arms) without U.S. interference. Journalist Seymour Hersh said, “Angleton’s close ties with the Deshalit family and others in Israel made it inevitable that he would learn about the construction [of Dimona] in the Negev. One senior official recalled that Angleton’s first intelligence report on Israel’s plans to build the bomb was filed routinely in the late 1950s.”612 Whether he provided other assistance to the Israeli nuclear program is a matter of conjecture.
John Hadden lost respect for Angleton.613 Perhaps his animosity stemmed from Angleton’s oversight of CIA’s Israel connection. As British superspy Peter Wright put it, “[Angleton] controlled the Israeli account and made the CIA station in Tel Aviv redundant.” Since Hadden was the station chief in Tel Aviv, he must have suffered from Angleton’s micromanagement. Furthermore, when Hadden ended his assignment in Tel Aviv he returned to Langley and reported to Angleton. Hadden’s son said that friction between the two led to Hadden’s retirement in 1973, a year before Angleton’s resignation. Those were tough times for both men. Wright recalled, “Angleton . . . was drinking far more than was good for him, and had begun to look not merely pallid but genuinely ravaged. . . . He became increasingly introspective. . . . He seemed pent-up and aggressive, trusting fewer and fewer people. . . .”614
On August 5, 1977, Senator John Glenn asked Ted Shackley, “What did Jim Angleton have to do with the NUMEC matter?” Much of Shackley’s short answer was redacted when CIA released the document, but it had interesting implications. “Mr. Angleton was the Chief of the CI [Counter Intelligence] Staff (two lines redacted). As a result (name redacted) had worked for Mr. Angleton. In view of this situation Mr. Angleton had obviously been aware of and interested in (name redacted) activities.” The point was made that such activities “obviously focused on NUMEC (two lines redacted).” The name John Hadden fits well in the redacted names in Shackley’s notes of the Glenn briefing.
Carl Ernest Duckett
Carl Duckett was the principal spokesman for CIA on NUMEC. Some people, such as General Giller, thought Duckett might not have presented the official conclusions of CIA. Despite doubts by a few outsiders, the Agency had a number of good things to say about Duckett.615
His CIA co-workers knew him as a “self-made” man because of his humble beginnings and his lack of a college degree. He was born in 1923, the fourth of seven children fathered by a “professional mountaineer” in a small community ten miles from Asheville, North Carolina. He worked as a clerk in a grocery store after graduating from Swannanoa High School. In the spring of 1942, he enrolled in a crash course for electronics technicians in the civil service. The course was essentially equivalent to the first half on an engineering degree. He finished near the top of his class. He then took a job with Westinghouse to train military personnel in the use of a radar system that saw wide application during World War II.
Carl E. Duckett
U.S. Army
1944-1962
CIA Deputy Director
Directorate of Science & Technology
1963-1977
In 1944, Westinghouse assigned Duckett to a team to integrate radar with a 90-mm gun and an analog computer. The team deployed to England where this unique antiaircraft system proved to be the most advanced weapon available for intercepting Germany’s V-l buzz bombs. He returned to the U.S. in August 1944 and received his draft notice two months later. The Army assigned him to advanced radar work at the MIT radiation laboratory after an IQ test showed he had exceptional scientific ability. He soon rose to the rank of Master Sergeant and set out for the Pacific to test a target indicator to protect warships from Japanese kamikazes. He returned to Westinghouse at the end of the war and deployed to White Sands Missile Test Range in New Mexico to participate in the first U.S. launch of a German V-2 rocket. He was discharged from the Army in 1946.
The Army recalled Duckett to active duty in 1950, promoted him to First Lieutenant and sent him to Signal Officer’s School in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. He returned to White Sands to command the radar division at the test range. After discharge from the Army in 1953, he worked in range instrumentation at White Sands until 1956.
He participated in a committee that reviewed the adequacy of U.S. missile test ranges and then received an intelligence clearance to review aerial photography of Soviet missile test ranges. That assignment involved frequent contact with Army intelligence personnel in the Pentagon. In 1957, DCI Allen Dulles assigned Duckett to a group that reviewed U-2 photographs of the Soviet test range at Tyuratam, Kazakhstan. In that assignment, Duckett met Albert “Bud” Wheelon, who later became head of CIA’s first Office of Scientific Intelligence.
Duckett organized and led the Army’s first full-time missile intelligence unit at Redstone Arsenal. In that capacity, he went to Washington in 1962 to help CIA identify intermediate-range missiles in U-2 photos of Cuba. Subsequently,
at a U.S. Intelligence Board (USIB) review of Chinese Strategic Weapons, Duckett’s presentation led to the revision of a National Intelligence Estimate. DCI McCone chaired the USIB at the time and was so impressed by Duckett’s presentation that he ordered CIA to hire him to set up a Foreign Missile and Space Analysis Center.
Bud Wheelon was Duckett’s first boss at CIA. As CIA’s top analyst on foreign missile and space matters Duckett had access to U-2 photographs of the Dimona reactor. By the mid 1960s, in addition to other duties, he was CIA’s expert on the Israeli atom bomb program.616
DCI McCone named thirty-three year old Wheelon as the first director of CIA’s directorate of science and technology, replacing Herbert Scoville, the former deputy director of research, who left CIA to join the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.617 Wheelon selected Duckett to be associate deputy director of DS&T. When Wheelon left CIA for a job with Hughes Aircraft in September 1966, Duckett assumed command of the directorate in an “acting” capacity. McCone and Helms later named Duckett to the permanent post in the spring of 1967.
He served as Deputy Director of CIA with oversight of DS&T, reporting directly to the DCI, until 1976. During his tenure, the directorate relinquished its role over aerial reconnaissance to the Air Force but achieved its peak of power and influence within the Agency. Dino Brugioni described Duckett as a man who “could turn technical data into laymanese.” Another senior CIA official said Duckett was “probably the best marketeer,” a man who “could sell Congress anything.”
In 1968, a Soviet diesel-driven submarine sank in the Pacific Ocean. It was armed with nuclear ballistic missiles. The U.S. Navy used a secret computerized tracking system to find the wreckage about 1700 miles from Hawaii. The Navy’s underwater Sound Surveillance System pinpointed the site with sufficient accuracy to permit the USS Halibut to find and photograph the wreckage. Duckett proposed an expedition to the bottom of the sea to recover the submarine, its cipher materials and its three missiles, each tipped with a four-megaton nuclear warhead. CIA contracted with Howard Hughes to build an enormous recovery ship called the Glomar Explorer at a cost of $70 million. The ship was longer than two football fields, and its design included a 300-foot underwater barge for resting any recovered wreckage and a roof over the lifting crane to prevent Soviet surveillance.
In 1974, the Explorer’s first attempt to recover the sunken Soviet sub was only partially successful in learning its nuclear secrets because the sub broke apart while ascending to the surface, and large pieces fell back to the ocean floor. Two nuclear torpedoes and a journal of naval operating instructions were the primary catch. In 1975 the cover story for a follow-on operation was blown when, in the course of a burglary investigation, FBI Director Kelley disclosed the project to a friend in the Los Angeles police department who told a subordinate who went to the press.618 The walls really do have ears.
Duckett frequently attended meetings of the National Security Council during the Ford administration in connection with the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty then being negotiated with the Soviet Union. President Ford, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, Arms Control and Disarmament Director Fred Ikle, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the DCI typically attended such NSC meetings. Other attendees usually numbered five or six, including Duckett and assistants to the president, such as Brent Scowcroft, Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Cheney. Duckett was on a first name basis with the NSC members. They relied on his expertise concerning the capabilities and deployment of various Soviet nuclear armaments and their delivery systems.619
Duckett’s scientific abilities aided Helms throughout his tenure as DCI. Helms assigned Duckett to help Kissinger understand the technical issues of nuclear detente. Kissinger came to call him “professor” because of his ability to explain technical matters to laymen. Duckett later recalled his relationship with Kissinger:620
What was difficult was when you have the national security advisor saying, “Look, the president of the United States and secretary of defense have said the following. Now, are you telling me that you are going to argue with them?” And the answer was, “No sir, I’m not going to argue with them, other than to tell you that they’re wrong.” But that’s when a senior intelligence officer . . . has to be prepared to say, the fact is, we do have enough information . . . and in this case, we felt the technical argument was overwhelming.
By 1972, Duckett was in charge of a worldwide enterprise with several generations of spacecraft spying from orbit, U-2s still on patrol and electronic eavesdropping churning out intercepted Soviet missile telemetry. He had numerous divisions under his command: Computer Services, Special Projects, Special Activities, Research and Development, Electronic Intelligence, Scientific Intelligence, the National Photographic Interpretation Center and FMSAC.621
In 1973, CIA awarded Duckett a Distinguished Intelligence Medal. The award cited him as a key expert in the field of foreign scientific and technological affairs and acknowledged his important role in the achievement of strategic arms limitations with the Soviet Union. It also mentioned his exceptional managerial talents and resourcefulness in improving intelligence collection methods.622 In 1976, Duckett received a second Distinguished Intelligence Medal. DCI William Colby presented the award for service as “Program Director of a major undertaking of the utmost importance to the United States.” Colby was less discreet in his impromptu remarks. “This medal is really given to you with the warmest of admiration of all of us for a great job. Despite the fact that the citation didn’t say so, it had something to do with a boat which Carl still owns.”623 The boat was the Glomar Explorer.
The next month, Duckett briefed NRC on Israeli nuclear weapons and their relationship to NUMEC.
Acknowledgement of Duckett’s alcoholism is important in judging his credibility. Colleagues reasoned that Duckett’s problems with the bottle stemmed from family problems and his disappointment at not being considered for the DCI post. According to DCI Bush’s Deputy Director for Intelligence, Sayre Stevens, Bush “treated Carl delicately, with genuine concern,” and “gave Carl every chance in the world.” After his resignation, Duckett acknowledged a discussion with Bush about the drinking problem but claimed Bush’s refusal to consider him for promotion was the real reason for his leaving the Agency.624
A former colleague of Duckett has offered the following unsolicited statement on Duckett’s character:625
There was an effort, almost certainly approved at a high level, that followed Duckett’s revelations to discredit him and dismiss his charges as the ravings of a drunk. I knew Carl as long ago as 1960, when he was working for the U.S. Army at Redstone Arsenal, and I was an army captain working as a photo-interpreter in Washington. Carl was in charge of an interagency effort to figure out what the Soviets were doing with their medium and intermediate range missile programs. . . . Carl was a competent and thoughtful manager then, with great integrity, and it was no surprise to me when he eventually became the CIA’s chief scientist. If he enjoyed a drink from time to time, I doubt that it would have ever influenced his judgment or critical thinking.
In 1981 Duckett appeared with former CIA analyst David Comer and others on Closeup, a television program produced by ABC News. Comer said that he participated in the formulation of a National Intelligence Estimate in the 1950s from which “a policy emerged . . . that the Israelis who were a very capable crew were one of the more likely proliferators.” Shimon Perez then told the Closeup audience how the U.S. accepted Israel’s ambiguous promise “not to be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East” as an acceptable basis for providing sophisticated armaments for Israel’s defense. Then Yuval Ne’eman joked with his Closeup interviewer about the possibility that HEU had been stolen from Apollo, but when pressed on the issue said, “I don’t know that story. I’m sure it didn’t end up in Israel, but I have nothing to do with this aspect of the story.” Then Duckett came on the screen and said CIA “finally became confident that
the diverted material from NUMEC went to Israeli nuclear devices.” Duckett went on to tell the Closeup audience, “all of my senior analysts who worked on the problem agreed with me fully; if not, it was their responsibility to tell me so. So yes, I think that the clear consensus in CIA was indeed NUMEC material had been diverted and used by the Israelis in fabricating weapons.” In commenting on the 1968 National Intelligence Estimate that flowed from the conclusion of his analysts, Duckett said “Director Helms told me President Johnson said ‘don’t tell anybody else, don’t even tell Dean Rusk or Bob McNamara.’ I guess the key impression to me was that indeed it was taken very seriously by the President, and obviously he was very concerned that we protect that information.”626
Some people have claimed that Duckett’s conclusions about the nexus between Israel’s first nuclear weapons and the uranium missing from Apollo were his alone and did not represent an official position of CIA. Their claims do not jibe with the evidence that three DCIs, one deputy DCI and an Associate Deputy Director of Operations endorsed Duckett’s conclusions. Duckett cited the following concurring opinions in a letter to Morris Udall on November 7, 1978 that was provided to the press in January 1979:627
•DCI William Colby sent a letter to President Ford on the subject, and
•DCI George H. W. Bush accompanied Duckett when he briefed the subject for Senator Howard Baker, who was then the senior Republican on the Joint Committee.
Records show the following additional concurrences by high CIA officials in Duckett’s conclusions about NUMEC:
•DCI Richard Helms took Duckett’s conclusions to Attorney General Ramsey Clark, AEC Chairman Seaborg and President Johnson in 1968;
•Deputy DCI Enno Knoche told DOE officials of CIA’s conclusions in the office of Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, Assistant to the President for National Security in April 1977;
Stealing the Atom Bomb: How Denial and Deception Armed Israel Page 33